


stay with me under these waves tonight

by firstaudrina



Series: blood and salt [2]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Addiction, Drug Withdrawal, M/M, Past Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, past suicidal ideation, post-2x10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-15 23:16:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14799839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: Jace had always wanted Simon as close as he could get him.





	stay with me under these waves tonight

**Author's Note:**

> Remember how I told a bunch of people I absolutely was not writing a sequel to ‘blood and salt’? Uh, well.
> 
> This is an alternate take on Season 2B, so canon after 2x10 doesn't matter much. This continues directly from the end of the first fic.

Waking up is like pulling himself out of quicksand. It's a feeling Jace is familiar with, like coming to on unknown shores with water in his lungs and a body on the beach. Formless dread makes him dizzy for a minute, certain only that whatever happened before he passed out was _bad_.

It takes him a minute or two to realize he's still in Simon's bedroom.

Sunlight streams in through the open window. It's quiet and Jace is alone, still zipped into his jacket and laced into his boots. Gloves cut into fingers still buzzy with sleep. Salt has gathered in the corners of his eyes and left trails down his cheeks that he scrubs at impatiently until the skin stings. His body feels hollowed out; there is a fragile, whistling emptiness inside of him.

A phlegmy cough racks him as he sets his feet on the ground and tries to stand, though he sways and falls back on his first attempt. The second is steadier, but barely. He doesn't remember falling asleep. 

Jace categorizes his numerous aches and pains with clinical dispassion. He slept with his face mashed so hard into Simon's pillow that his jaw actually hurts, but it's nothing compared to the throbbing in his head. Dehydration, probably, since his eyes are sore from crying. A quick pass over his healing rune does nothing.

He can't stay here. He's already been here too long.

He considers going out the window, but a quick glance tells him the landing would be too tricky, especially feeling like he does. He'll have to go out the way he came. It should be easy: a rushed goodbye, a quick excuse, and he's gone. He'll go —

He'll find somewhere to go.

Halfway down the stairs, Jace hears Simon and his mom chatting over the sounds of breakfast being cooked; the smell of eggs and butter and toast makes him hungry and queasy in equal measure. He pauses, stairs creaking under him, and hopes Simon's enhanced hearing doesn't pick it up. But Simon is too engrossed in the conversation to be listening.

"He's just going through some stuff, Ma," Simon says. "He needed to crash."

Elaine makes a low, humming noise of consideration. "He did look…nervous," she says, like she means something less polite. "Monkey. You would tell me if your boyfriend was on drugs, wouldn't you?"

Sounding strangled, Simon exclaims, "Jesus, Mom."

"I'm only asking —"

"He's not my boyfriend and he's not on drugs. Please stop listening to all those murder podcasts, they are making you jump to conclusions."

Elaine laughs, a pleasant sound. "Alright, alright. But honey — you would tell me, wouldn't you?"

Jace saves Simon from responding by making his way noisily down the rest of the stairs, stopping awkwardly at the doorway to the kitchen. "Uh," he says, and belatedly swipes a hand through his hair. "Hello. Good morning." He dips his head in a nod. "Mrs. Lewis."

"Good morning, Ja—" Elaine shoots Simon a look of pure comical horror at her memory lapse, syllables tilting into a question as she tries, "Jason?"

"Mom, you accuse a guy of being a drug addict and you don't even know his name?" Simon tsks, but he's grinning as he starts piling food on a plate. " _Jace_ , are you hungry?"

"Oh, um, I couldn't impose —"

“Simon, tell your friend he’s being ridiculous.”

“Friend,” Simon says gravely, looking at Jace. “You are being ridiculous.”

Elaine smiles fondly and ruffles Simon’s hair before grabbing her coffee and a muffin, stuffing the latter into her bag with just a napkin for protection. "I have to head to work, but I want you boys to enjoy breakfast, okay? See you later, monkey."

"Don't work too hard, Elaine," Simon calls after her. Then he turns a too-soft smile on Jace. “You should eat.”

“You’re getting good at that,” Jace notes. “Lying to her.”

There is a contained flinch in Simon’s expression, like the fine tremor of an earthquake under asphalt. “Do what you gotta do,” he says lightly. “And you, buddy of mine, gotta eat.”

Though still internally resistant, Jace sits on the stool next to Simon and pulls the loaded plate towards him. “Sorry,” he says.

“It’s cool.” Simon watches him. “I’ll give you one, you had a rough night. How are you feeling, by the way?”

Jace shrugs, pushes eggs around his plate.

“Come on, man,” Simon says quietly. “Don’t do that. Aren’t we past the shrugs and silences?”

“Why?” Jace spears a chunk of sausage too hard and the tines of the fork grate against the ceramic. “Because you got a front row seat to my meltdown? Congrats, enjoy the blackmail material.” 

“Do you really think I’d use any of that against you, after everything?”

Jace throws the fork down without taking a single bite, no longer hungry. “After what?” he demands. “After drinking my blood? After kissing me? Have you gone soft on me because you know what I taste like? You think that means anything?”

“Yes,” Simon says shortly. “And even if it didn’t, I’m still capable of basic human kindness. You —”

“Are vampires capable of basic human kindness?”

Simon blows out a breath. “I forgot how much of an asshole you can be,” he remarks. “I said I’d give you _one_.”

“Cool,” Jace says, getting up. “Then I’ll be on my w—”

Simon catches him by the wrist to hold him there. Their eyes meet, and Jace stills. What he feels is complicated. There’s a prickling discomfort crawling down his spine as he remembers how much Simon knows about him now. All that blackmail he’ll never use: the way Jace craved Simon’s touch and his teeth, the sounds he made when they were alone, the desperate way he sought Simon out. So needy, not like Simon had expected him to be. 

“I’m sorry,” Jace repeats, slower now and imbued with more meaning. Simon nods and releases him, relaxing.

A little vulnerability and anyone could have this boy.

“You know you’re not…” Simon starts, then stops, then amends, “Everyone needs to be loved, Jace. It’s not a fault. It doesn’t mean you’re weak. It just means you’re a person.”

But he isn’t a person. He’s a Shadowhunter. 

“And it’s kind of comforting, honestly,” Simon continues. “I was beginning to think that you were just a razor sharp sense of sarcasm with good hair.”

A bubble of laughter escapes Jace’s lips. It makes Simon smile and makes Jace feel calm enough to sit down again. “What happens when everyone finds out?”

Simon lifts and lowers a shoulder. “They find out.”

“You make it sound simple.”

“I have a way with words.”

Smiling slightly, Jace ducks his head before leaning forward to kiss Simon impulsively, pulling away as quickly as he’d pushed forward. But Simon immediately moves to fill the space and catch Jace’s lips again, his hand steady on Jace’s cheek. His hands always so steady.

 

 

 

Simon spends the rest of the morning and early afternoon teaching Jace how to play Call of Duty. Jace allows it because Simon lights up when he gets to explain something, becoming animated and bright over the silliest of details. He’s not a sore loser, either, and he loses a _lot_ despite being a patently better player; it takes Jace three rounds to realize Simon is letting him win, even when his hand shakes so badly that he drops the controller.

“Considering your day job, maybe I should find, like, a soothing puzzle or something,” Simon says.

Dryly, Jace replies, “Yeah, how will I ever get past the trauma of computer generated destruction?”

It’s nice to pretend for a little while, his phone shoved between couch cushions and forgotten, but it’s not without challenges. The breakfast Simon watched Jace eat sits uneasily in his stomach. Nothing seems to make a dent in his dizziness either. Any sudden movement making his insides lurch and temples pulse, but Jace tells himself the pain is good. The pain means he’s doing something right. He’s resisting. 

Eventually he texts Izzy and asks her to cover for him a little while longer. _Okay, brother_ , she writes back. _But why can’t you just come home?_

A few minutes later, she follows it up with: _Please know you can come home_.

Jace doesn’t know why he doesn’t leave. He could kill time at the Hunter’s Moon or beg Magnus for the spare room again. He could figure out any number of solutions that don’t involve going back to the Institute or facing the music, but he’s just too tired to leave the comforting cocoon of the Lewis house.

That’s all it is. He’s too tired.

Jace is still there when Rebecca returns from afternoon classes and he’s still there when Elaine gets back from work. Neither woman openly questions his presence but glances are shared Lewis to Lewis like some kind of familial telepathy Jace can’t decipher. The three of them get to work whipping up dinner, Elaine giving orders and Becky chopping vegetables and Simon jumping in to wash the dishes so he can avoid taking part in taste tests. Jace keeps his distance. Simon tells his family that Jace isn’t feeling well, but the obvious lie is the least of it. He’s never experienced a family like the Lewises before. He feels like he’s watching them on TV; they’re that far away from him.

When they eat, Simon inches his chair right up next to Jace’s, so close their elbows knock together every time they move. He’s a blur of courtesy, ladling out this or that, stealing forkfuls that he deposits on his own dish before transferring some of his food to Jace’s. He lays a light hand on the center of Jace’s back and flashes him teasing grins, all of which Jace finds unbearably annnoying until it occurs to him that it’s all misdirection. Simon is using him as a cover to disguise his own lack of eating — and it’s working, too. Elaine and Rebecca are so amused they don’t even notice that nothing makes it to Simon’s mouth.

Smiling a little, Jace goes with it, snagging the roll off Simon’s plate and getting another grin for his trouble. The tension in Jace’s chest eases a little.

Or it does until Becky asks, “So how did you crazy kids meet?”

He freezes, but Simon doesn’t miss a beat. “Jace is Clary’s ex.”

Rebecca’s eyes widen. “Shut up,” she says delightedly. “ _What?_ Oh my god, Simon, did you steal your best friend’s boyfriend? XOXO, Simon Lewis.”

Jace is used to being on the receiving end of Simon’s most exasperated looks, but the one he directs at Becky leaves all that past irritation in the dust. “I did not steal my best friend’s boyfriend. Jace is not my boyfriend!”

Becky ignores him, continuing happily, “God, what a scandal. It’s always the ones you don’t expect. Is this why we never see Clary anymore? Does she totally hate you now?”

They’re sitting so close that Jace can feel Simon go rigid and then feel him forcibly unclench. Before he can respond, Jace offers, “Clary and I were kind of complicated. We never really went out officially.”

“Ah, so there was a loophole to exploit,” Becky says sagely. “Just like a future accountant.”

“Rebecca, give your brother a break.” Elaine has the air of having said the same thing many times, but she surveys both of her children with irrepressible fondness. 

Simon and Jace are on dish duty afterwards while Elaine and Rebecca watch a movie in the living room. Jace has to rest an arm against the edge of the countertop to still his tremors, and he still drops a glass — but Simon’s lightning-fast vamp reflexes allow him to catch it before it hits the floor. He smiles reassuringly at Jace. “No harm, no foul.”

Jace isn’t so sure. It’s been days since the last bite and that hadn’t even been a good one, just a little nip Simon had taken from his wrist while they were making out in the boathouse. He’d left blood-tinged kisses up the inside of Jace’s arm, punctured a vein at the crook of his elbow and sipped from the thin river that spilled over. It wasn’t enough venom to last Jace this long. 

By the end of the night, he must look worse for wear because Elaine slides a motherly hand over his forehead to check his temperature. Jace flinches without meaning to, hating himself for it and for making her wince in apology. “Sorry, honey,” she says. “You don’t look so hot. Think it could be the flu?”

Jace nods and the room seesaws with the movement. “Maybe.”

“Set him up on the couch, monkey, and don’t stay up too late — Jace looks like he could use the rest.”

Simon promises and kisses his mom goodnight, which Becky mocks from a distance as she heads upstairs. It’s not long before they’re alone. “I’d let you sleep in my room,” Simon tells him conversationally, tucking a sheet around the couch cushions and laying out pillows. “But, you know, moms.”

“It wouldn’t be a good idea anyway.” Jace lowers himself down stiffly, so worn out now that he doesn’t even protest Simon covering him with a quilt. 

“Probably not,” Simon agrees with a sigh. Then he smiles, quick and sweet. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

But Jace can’t sleep. He can’t stand the silence of this foreign living room with all its homey details, the baby photos on the walls and fresh flowers arranged in vases. So much care has been put into this house. He can hear his own heartbeat in his ears. He closes his eyes, jaw tight. He opens them. Gets up. Goes to Simon’s room.

Simon is awake, laptop open and headphones on. He pushes them off when he sees Jace in the doorway and smiles sheepishly. “Ironically, I have trouble sleeping at night now,” he says. “You too?”

Jace drifts inside and shuts the door, leaning back against it. “Yeah.” 

Simon studies him for a long moment before he closes his laptop and moves it aside, setting the headphones on top. “Do you…want to talk?”

Jace shakes his head. “Nope.” He meets Simon’s gaze. “You know what I want.” He holds up a hand to forestall a response. “I know. We can’t. But I —” He presses his lips together and has to look away. “I _want_ it.”

After a moment, Simon says softly, “Me too. You know, when you’re flushed, it’s like… It’s like I can sense it, your blood so close. I’ve had it so many times.” He pauses. “It bonds us, I think. Not as much as if you’d had mine, but it does. I remember, with Camille —”

He breaks off. Curious, Jace comes over to sit with him, even though it’s probably not smart; Simon shifts to make room, then takes a deep breath and continues.

“It was like I was magnetized,” he says. “I couldn’t stop myself from trying to find her again and again. I knew what I felt wasn’t — even when it was happening, I knew I was feeling things that weren’t my feelings. But because of — the venom, I guess, and the bite and her blood, I just… It was hard to care.”

Jace absorbs that, expression giving away nothing, and says, “But you were able to push past it. When we found you —”

“I know. Even after.”

Jace digs whitened knuckles into the hard line of his thigh, but it doesn’t hurt enough to make an impact. “I get it,” he says. “You think we only feel this way because of physiology.”

“I mean, maybe?” Simon ventures. “We can’t deny that there’s some biological imperative at play here. I will always want to feed. And my venom makes you think you want to be fed on. It creates this loop between us that we can’t break.”

Jace wants to ask about that kiss this morning. Was that biological imperative, too?

“If you feel that way, then why are you letting me stay here?”

Simon always has such simple answers to such complicated questions. “Because we’re friends.”

“Are we?” Jace wonders quietly. It lacks his usual attitude. “Were we ever? Did you even like me before this?”

It’s the one question he’s been dying to ask since this started and he can’t quite believe it made it past his lips. Simon’s hesitation tells him everything he needs to know. Jace huffs in embarrassed disbelief and starts to get up, but Simon stops him with a touch. “In my defense, you’re always acting like a jerk,” he says lightly, jokingly. 

Jace isn’t amused. “I’m sorry I made this so confusing for you. Next time I’ll be more careful whose fangs I let in. I’ll try not to get _blood-bonded_ to people who don’t even like me.”

Simon sighs. “Jace. You keep — You keep acting like we had some great relationship before this. I know you said you didn’t hate me, but, you know. Actions speak louder than words. If you felt anything else, you were _real_ quiet about it.”

Jace presses his lips together. “I can tell the difference between my real feelings and the venom, that’s all.”

“Can you?”

“Yes,” Jace says tightly.

They don’t speak for a minute. The room is dim, the house hushed; everything feels more intimate after midnight, more dangerous, less certain. Finally, Simon says, “After the first time we kissed, I said you were straight and you told me it was complicated.”

The hairs on the back of Jace’s neck prickle. Brusquely, he says, “Yeah?”

Simon looks at him. “What’s complicated?”

Jace’s hands rest loosely in his lap, and it only takes the slightest shift to pinch the skin of his wrist so hard between two fingers that the resultant jolt makes it easier for him to breathe. But Simon reaches over to gently move his hands, to softly brush over the reddened patch. It startles Jace, that Simon notices, that Simon —

“When we were growing up, we’d have these training sessions where the older kids would help out the younger ones,” Jace says. “I was thirteen, I think, I hadn’t been in the city that long. There was… There was this one guy, he was a little older, maybe fifteen or sixteen. I used to — I always looked for him when I got to the sparring room, and I — if he wasn’t there before me, it made me… I don’t know, anxious. But I was nervous when he was there, too. I always wanted us to be paired together. But even when we were, I’d act like such a brat, like I was the one doing him a favor. I did whatever I had to do to win the matches, but one day he’d had enough of me or something, and he won. He pinned me. I lost.” He clears his throat, doesn’t make eye contact. “I was never so glad to lose.”

He’d never even thought of it as a crush. It was just a rushing in his ears, a thrumming in his veins. Excitement and self-consciousness tangled up together. 

Simon is grinning. “So you’re telling me there’s precedent.”

Jace glances at him. “Something like that.”

Softly, Simon offers, “It’s nice to know something about you.” 

After a moment, Jace says, “You know a lot of things about me nobody else does.”

He doesn’t just mean blood.

Almost like he’s trying to even the score, Simon says, “My first kiss was when I was thirteen — well, almost thirteen, actually. It was after a Torah lesson. Bar mitzvah prep. Me and this other kid, Joel, we were waiting for our moms to pick us up and he just —” He shrugs, almost wistful. “Kissed me. I hadn’t put two and two together about that stuff yet. I called Becky, like, _immediately_ after because I couldn’t tell Clary, you know?” His smile is sheepish. “I hadn’t put two and two together about _that_ either.”

“What did she say?” Jace asks. “Becky.”

He laughs. “She asked if he was cute.”

Simon’s energy is infectious, that quality he has of being so excited and eager for _everything_. Jace is so envious of it that when he says, “That’s sweet,” it comes out sarcastic even though he honestly means it. It is sweet that Simon grew up in a world where he could kiss a boy when he was twelve and tell his sister without even a shred of worry. 

He cocks his head, observing Jace inquisitively. “I thought so.”

The question in his expression is obvious and Jace finds himself answering it, saying, “I don’t mean to be…weird, it’s just — the way you grew up, it’s so…different. Mundane. Normal.”

“It wasn’t perfect,” Simon says. “My dad died. My mom checked out for two years because she was drunk all the time. And it might not have been endless turmoil, but I struggled, you know, figuring out that I could actually like girls and guys at the same time. I had stuff too.”

It may not have been perfect, but it sounded almost idyllic compared to life in a cabin with a man wearing someone else’s face, compared to having his fingers broken for playing the wrong note on the piano and craving affection so violently that it repulsed him when he got it. “I just wish…” 

Kindly, “What?”

Jace shrugs, says, “That I was different.”

Simon’s brow furrows. The way he says Jace’s name is almost helpless, and he shifts closer to put his arms around Jace like he had the night before during Jace’s panic attack. It’s not a tight hug but still a surprising one; one of Jace’s arms goes up around Simon in return before he even thinks twice about it.

“I don’t want to say the wrong thing,” Simon murmurs, his cheek against Jace’s neck. “You’re not a bad person, Jace. You have a lot of really good things in your life. I don’t know if that helps. It probably doesn’t.”

Jace’s fingers curl in the fabric of Simon’s shirt and he pulls back just enough to fit his mouth against Simon’s. There’s a taut, immobile moment before the kiss is returned, Simon’s lips parting and head tilting as it eases into something more. Kissing Simon is familiar now. There is always a beat of nervousness, fear of rejection, before it gives, deepens. They’d fought the last time they kissed like this and Jace wants to make up for it, make up for everything he’s put Simon through since the night Valentine made him put his hand on the Soul Sword. 

Jace leans back, pulling Simon with him. Simon smoothes Jace’s hair out of his face and drops soft kisses on his mouth, one after another; it’s like he wants to soothe Jace, erase the memory of tear tracks and hiccupping breaths. But Jace needs distraction, so he bites bluntly at Simon’s lower lip, sweeps his tongue into his mouth. When Simon moans, the sound of it stifled by the kiss, Jace nudges him up so that he can pull his borrowed t-shirt over his head. Simon helps strip it from his arms before divesting himself of his own. Then he dives back in, his skin so cool under Jace’s fingers. Simon shivers. Jace likes that.

“G—,” Simon breathes, the word lost in his throat, “When you touch me —”

Jace drags his hands over the shifting muscle of Simon’s back, slides them down to grab his ass. He holds Simon in place and rolls his hips, feels that Simon is already hard, so quick. The kisses have become heated and longing, impossible to control. Jace twists under Simon and tips his head back, neck stretched; he shudders when Simon’s lips land lightly on his pulse point, followed by the wet tease of his tongue. 

But then Simon is gone. In the space between one inhale and the next, he’d flung himself across the room vampire-fast. Back against the door, breathing fast. Covering his mouth. His fangs.

“I’m sorry,” Simon says, thick around the bulk of teeth. “I didn’t want to —”

Jace rubs an unsteady hand over his unmarked neck. “No, yeah, that’s — Good instinct.”

He says it but he doesn’t mean it. He wants Simon’s teeth in his throat more than anything. He wants to stop wanting it. He wants to stop feeling sick. But perhaps more than anything he wants to be close to Simon like that again, close in the way of blood and heartbeats and silence. Pain and the release from pain.

Diving across the room was definitely a good instinct.

“I’m gonna —” Simon blows out another breath, hard. “I am going to go take an incredibly frigid shower. I think you should —”

“Go back to the couch,” Jace finishes. He grabs one of the abandoned t-shirts, doesn’t matter which since they’re both Simon’s, and tugs it on. “Where I will stay until the morning.”

The corner of Simon’s lips lifts a little, but he nods decisively. “Good idea.”

They go their separate ways. Jace does not get up from the couch again but he also doesn’t sleep at all that night, his skin burning. His body craving.

 

 

 

Jace is much worse in the morning. 

He’s been on edge for days, but he was trained to compartmentalize his body, to put pain to one side so that he could do his job. Withdrawals had never gotten so bad that he couldn’t grit his teeth and grin through them. But sometime in the night what began as tremors evolves into full on shakes and by dawn he’s been rendered insensible. 

Sunlight is sharp on the seam of his closed eyes, but he can’t get away from it no matter how much he twists and turns. There’s no escaping the knife-pain in his head, even when his fingertips claw into his temples to try and alleviate one hurt with another. He presses his face into his sweat-soaked pillow to muffle a ragged whimper. 

_Jonathan_ , he hears. He presses his hands over his ears. _Now, now, Jonathan_.

There’s pressure along his bowed spine, a smooth stroke from nape to tailbone and back up again. A hand. And right after, a voice: “It’s Jace. No, I know. I _know_. But there’s gotta be something — Izzy, I don’t know what to do.” 

Jace clenches his fists against a wave of nausea before croaking, “Simon?”

“I’ll call you back. No, he’s — he’s asking for me. Yes. I promise, okay, bye.” Simon swims hazily into Jace’s field of vision, kneeling on the floor next to him. “Hey, man.”

“Feel like…” He lurches suddenly. “I’m gonna —”

“Bucket!” Simon grabs for a small plastic trashcan that he gets into position just in time for Jace to lose the remnants of his dinner in it. “I talked to Isabelle.”

“Heard,” Jace mumbles, collapsing back against the blankets. 

“She has something that might help.” Simon’s voice is hopeful, but even through half-closed eyes Jace can see the deep, doubtful crease between his brows. He runs a hand through Jace’s damp hair, cups his cheek; Jace appreciates the sentiment, but his skin is so all-over sensitive that he jerks away. Simon blanches. “Jace, I am so sorry. I’m so sorry I did this to you.”

“Fuck off,” Jace sighs, barely has the energy for more than that. “Did it to myself.” 

“Two to tango,” Simon says lightly. “And one to puke his guts out, apparently.” He starts in about something else, water and Advil or runes and steles, but Jace has already begun to drift. The border between awake and asleep is so thin it’s easy to coast right over it.

The next time Jace surfaces, it’s to a cool wet cloth being pressed against his forehead. But the person wielding it isn’t Simon. It’s his mother. “He’s awake,” Elaine says with a smile. “That flu got you after all.”

Jace coughs. “Mm,” he says. “Flu.”

“Simon went out to get you something. I told him we have Theraflu, but he was very insistent — apparently there’s something herbal a friend of yours swears by? He should be back soon, though, don’t worry. And just between you and me, I’ve nursed two kids through so many colds and flus that I might as well have an honorary doctorate. You would not _believe_ how many times my little hypochondriac thought he was coming down with something. In fact — oh, sorry, honey, am I talking your ear off?”

Jace admittedly wasn’t listening to every word, but the rise and fall of her chatter is calming in the same way Simon’s could be. “No, it’s okay… It’s nice.”

She smiles and sets the compress aside so she can help him sit up and drink some water. Food is out of the question, but Elaine nevertheless provides him with a box of very dry crackers and a bottle of electric looking Gatorade, plus an ice pack that she tucks behind his neck. In his tender state it’s almost too much to handle. 

Jace can’t remember if anyone has ever taken care of him when he was sick. He can recall the phantom sensation of Maryse’s hand pressed briskly to his forehead before she sent him to the infirmary. That was always the last resort for those who couldn’t shake the sickness off. Mostly you worked through it and didn’t complain to anybody. 

He remembers Michael Wayland feeding him chicken soup, too. He remembers being left alone in that little house, feverish and shaking, just like he’s shaking now.

“Jace.” Elaine levels him with a look he’s well acquainted with because of Maryse: a mother who knows something is going on and expects a full confession. “Simon mentioned that you were having some trouble. Is this… You know you can tell me if there’s something else going on here. In fact, you _should_ , because then we can handle it better.” 

Jace thinks of Simon saying his mother had been drunk for two years after his father died. He’s not sure Simon had ever mentioned that before, but surely Elaine Lewis is a woman who knows what sweating it out looks like.

And she’s not even angry. She just wants to help.

“I have been…having trouble,” Jace says after a moment. He sounds rough. “Family stuff. It’s been…hard.” Her expression is so open and concerned that he doesn’t stop there. “I found out my dad wasn’t my dad. He, uh… He kidnapped me when I was a baby. My dad. Not my dad.”

Her hand flies to her chest in the very picture of shock, eyes widening. “Oh my god, honey. I can’t even imagine. Oh my _god_ , no wonder you’re sick — you know, when the emotions get rundown, the body follows, that’s what I always say.” She shakes her head, sighing, and then gathers Jace’s trembling hands in hers. “You can stay as long as you need, okay? Say okay.”

“Okay,” Jace repeats.

“And say, ‘thank you, Elaine, you’re a lifesaver.’” Her little smile must be intended to buoy him, because Simon makes the exact same expression when he wants to cheer someone up.

Jace tries to give her a smile in return, but it’s like his mouth can’t make the right shape and goes the other way instead, his face crumpling into sudden hot tears. It’s humiliating, but Elaine immediately scoops him into a hug that he can’t find it in him to resist, and he’s crying into the shoulder of her nice silk blouse. When he’s worn out, exhausted and too dehydrated to keep going, Elaine sets him back against the pillows. “Water,” she says firmly. “Rest. Time. That’s the prescription.”

“Does it work?”

She smiles, but it’s more than a little melancholy. “Comes the closest.”

 

 

 

Whatever Simon gets from Izzy barely makes a dent, though Jace is able to keep down three crackers for a whole hour before he’s gagging again. He tries to think of the pain as purifying but he feels so trapped in it, unable to alleviate or evade. He finds himself clutching Simon’s arms and begging in a low voice so Elaine won’t hear, “Please, just one more time, just a little bit, if you could just do it a little bit then I could get through it. You don’t even — you could just go out and get me some yin fen, okay, then you won’t even have to, you could just get me some and I’ll be okay for the night, I can take it slow until I don’t need it anymore, Simon, please —”

But Simon won’t.

He clenches his teeth so hard that it actually looks painful, but all he does is clean up, get Jace ice, try to keep him hydrated. He puts on stupid reality TV shows and talks nonstop, his voice a dull buzz in the back of Jace’s brain that drowns out other, less pleasant thoughts. He doesn’t go to sleep when night falls either, just sits in the nearest chair and waits it out with Jace. 

It must be close to four in the morning when something breaks.

Jace has been sick so many times he feels inside out. He’s wavering and weak, no fight left, nothing but this pulsing feeling under his skin that’s desperate to get out. He’s practicing arguments in his head again. _Just bite me once, one more time. I can see it’s hurting you too. Just one more time. We can control it. I promise, I promise, I promise_.

He’s still begging when another rush of shuddering _hurt_ has him curling into a tight ball on the couch. But just when he thinks he hasn’t been peeled apart enough, just when he thinks every other ache he’s ever experienced pales in comparison to this, it all stops. Just like that. 

He sits up gingerly and touches his arms, his legs, his chest. He’s fragile still, but no longer going haywire. When he looks up, Simon is staring at him like he has four heads.

“Dude,” Simon says. “You were _glowing_.”

Jace returns the incredulous look with one of his own. “What?”

“You were glowing!” Simon repeats. “You had like a — your eyes got really gold and your runes sort of… It was like someone plugged you in.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I drink blood to survive and have a wizard on speed dial. What part of any of this makes any sense?”

After perhaps the most satisfying shower of Jace’s entire existence, he joins Simon on the back steps of the house, which lead down to a trim little garden the size of a stamp. The sun is coming up, but there’s still enough evening in the air to make the early hour refreshingly cool and muted. They don’t talk for a while, but Jace finally says, “I have to go back to the Institute.”

“Yeah,” Simon agrees. “You really do.” He studies Jace with relief, but there’s something heavy lurking in his gaze. “This is what I was so afraid of when I turned, you know. Being a monster. I feel like you gave me back my life and you just got punished for it.”

Jace actually scoffs. “Look, I know monsters, Simon. You’re about as far from one as a person can get. I don’t blame you. Okay? Do you want it in writing? I don’t blame you.”

Simon smiles, just a little. “I’ll take it in calligraphy, thanks.”

A laugh catches Jace by surprise. “Okay. I’ll get right on that.”

 

 

 

“And then to _vanish_ for _days on end_ —”

“What your mother is trying to say is —”

“I don’t need you to speak for me, Robert, thank you —”

Jace has never felt more like a child than he does sitting in the center of the couch across from his pacing parents. He’d always gone out of his way to please them, preened under their praise and flashed Izzy a cocky grin when she called him a suck-up, so eager for the affection on offer from Maryse and Robert. He disappointed them so rarely; they respected performance above all and he was always the best. But he’s spent the last few months sinking so deep that Maryse is surely regretting whatever kind words she’d given him in a heartbroken moment.

“Robert, can you please?” Growing ever more curt, Maryse presses her fingers to her temples before pointing at the door. Robert gives Jace a typically sad, sorry look before he goes, unable or unwilling to do more.

“We’ll talk later, son,” he says, but with him there have been many laters that haven’t come.

It’s shocking to actually _see_ Maryse’s body language change once he’s gone, her shoulders dropping and spine curving in a slump. Her haughty straight-backed posture reshapes into vulnerability and distress. “How could I have overlooked this twice?”

Jace doesn’t answer. 

“You let a vampire feed on you,” she says, not for the first time today.

“Not _a_ vampire,” Jace mutters, a little immature. “Simon.”

“Yes, it’s so much better that it was the mundane who was killed under your watch.” It’s a sucker-punch and she sees that, grimacing before she comes to sit beside him. “I’m sorry. That was unfair.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Jace says. “That’s what happened.”

Maryse raises a hand but lets it fall, uncertain, before trying again. The second time, she follows through on smoothing Jace’s hair back behind his ear. She touches his cheek. “I’m upset, and I don’t always express myself very well when I’m upset. As you know.”

“Slightly familiar,” Jace says.

She gives him a spare smile. “I’m sorry you’ve been in so much pain. You and Isabelle both.”

Jace turns to her and Maryse allows it, her arm curling around him as he presses his face to her shoulder. When he first came to the Lightwoods, he was so intimidated by her that he used to fumble whatever he was holding when she came into a room; he could barely talk at dinner. Robert was more gregarious, and he had loved Michael Wayland. The man they all thought was Michael Wayland. Maryse seemed sterner, a fortress. But Jace can still remember the first time she hugged him, the fierceness in it that told him she was tough so that she could protect him. That she would always try to protect him, even if she was not always successful. 

“I’m sorry, Mom,” he says, thick.

Maryse hushes him, then says, “Isabelle goes to meetings, you know. Mundane ones. Perhaps that would help you as well.”

The idea makes Jace’s skin crawl, but Simon had said the same thing so he’ll probably end up giving in.

“I also —” Maryse hesitates. “It’s my understanding that you have some level of romantic involvement with this vampire.”

Jace freezes, their embrace now a trap. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“It isn’t — Like your brother, you know, I wouldn’t mind that you…” She clears her throat and shifts him back, eyes traveling over his face searchingly. “But you understand that this attachment is not healthy, don’t you? I think it would be best if you avoided this vampire in the future.”

“Simon,” Jace says again. “His name is Simon.”

No one but him seems to think that makes a difference. 

 

 

 

Izzy is waiting outside when Jace is done. The last time they saw each other, he’d run from her like a coward. She still tried to help however she could, covering for him and conferring with Simon. Now she’s here. Guilt is so dense in his throat Jace could choke on it. 

“How’d it go?”

His shoulders jerk in an approximation of a shrug. “You know Mom.”

“Yeah, I know Mom.” Izzy tilts her head slightly. “She can surprise you.”

Jace nods and scrubs a hand over his face. “I don’t really deserve it,” he says, trying to imbue it with so much more than mere self-pity: all the remorse and affection he feels for her, for all of them.

“Stop it,” Izzy says firmly, eyebrows lifting. “You can only wallow for so long, brother. You’re gonna get dark circles.” The corner of her lips quirks. “Darker circles.”

With a breathy sound almost like a chuckle, he says, “I have been slacking on my beauty regime.”

“I can tell,” she teases, but her smile is sad. “Priorities change.”

Jace smiles too, but ducks his head and says, “I wasn’t there for you. After.”

“No,” Izzy agrees. “I didn’t let you and you didn’t let me. But we can be there for each other now.”

“This new attitude of yours is very zen.”

“I’ve been doing a lot of work on myself,” she says jokingly. “Forensic pathology is nothing compared to group therapy.”

The thought makes him uneasy, but he says, “I believe it.”

Just then his phone dings, but he doesn’t bother to look at it. Simon has been checking in with him periodically but Jace has yet to respond. If Izzy notices, she doesn’t comment.

“Have you seen Alec yet?” she asks. He shakes his head. “Clary?” Another denial. She sighs. “You should get it over with. It gets easier every time, I promise.”

“It’s inevitable,” Jace says, which is not an assurance that he’ll do it or an acknowledgment about how it makes him feel. Izzy seems aware of that but she lets it pass. For now. 

“So,” she says. “You and Simon, huh?”

Jace purses his lips and starts walking. “Good talk, Izzy. We’re done, right?”

Izzy grins and falls into step with him, undeterred. “Come on, you can tell your sister.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Jace says. Voice so free of inflection that even he might be convinced.

 

 

 

Jace should stay on the opposite side of the glass, but he can imagine the look on Valentine’s face if he tried it. He can hear his voice. _Afraid, Jace? What could I possibly do to you now?_

Valentine had never needed weapons, only words. He could worm his way into Jace’s brain with a mere suggestion, plant seeds and wait for them to bear poisonous fruit. Even now Jace is thinking, _you can’t do anything to me. I’m not afraid of anything_. But he’s answering a version of a man he made up long ago, the ghost Valentine left behind in his psyche so that he could pull Jace’s strings no matter where he was.

Jace had been very insistent about not speaking to Valentine whenever anyone asked, but he lets himself into the cell when the guard is changing. Valentine watches him with supreme amusement from where he is locked in his chair, eyes very bright in his face for a man who has run out of options.

“It’s incredible,” he says, “how gossip can reach even those who are meant to be in total isolation. How are those tremors treating you, Jonathan?”

Jace hasn’t felt so much as a shiver since whatever he pulled with the runes, though he’s still uncomfortably fragile. He hasn’t regained his equilibrium yet, constantly steeled for his body to betray him in some new way.

Valentine continues, “I confess, I do worry about how Clarissa is handling it all. Assuming, of course, that you told her. She seemed incredibly surprised earlier to find that you were not her brother after all — one would think that’s the kind of thing you tell a girl.”

Dread and anxiety roil in Jace’s stomach, but he clenches his jaw and grits out, “I’m not here for this.”

Valentine waits. “Then what are you here for?”

Jace would not have had to open a vein for Simon if Valentine had not opened his throat first.

Every bad thing that ever happened to Jace could be sourced back to one person: the man who put on Michael Wayland’s face and then pretended to die, who came back only so he could fit Jace into his plans, no matter what he had to say to do it. Making Jace think he wanted to touch his own sister. Making Jace think there was something dark and wrong in him, something Valentine could cultivate so that he could make Jace commit atrocities. Making him think he was weak and worthless. Erasing it all with a smile and putting a new story in its place, telling Jace to believe that instead. And Jace falling for it every time.

“My family,” Jace says. “My parents. The people you took me from. Who are they?”

Valentine gaze is dark and glittering, his lip curling in a smirk or a snarl. “I’m your family,” he says. “You may not be my son but you’re still my son. I made you. I raised you. That makes you mine.”

“You _kidnapped_ me,” Jace says. “You abandoned me.”

“I took care of you,” Valentine counters. “I made sure you were taken care of. _She_ couldn’t have done it — your mother. You were better off.”

Jace’s skin prickles all over, oddly numb. “You knew her,” he realizes. It wasn’t random.

Valentine shrugs. “She was weak. You were too strong for her, you would have destroyed her either way. I did what had to be done. And now look at you. The finest warrior of his age.”

Jace has looked at himself more lately than he has in his entire life. All he finds are pieces. “I’m not interested in your rationalizations. Just tell me their names. _My_ name.”

“You have the name I gave you,” Valentine says. “That’s the only one you need.”

 

 

 

Jace feels like screaming. 

He makes it as far as the shadowed hallway outside the cell before he loses it, his chest so constricted that he has to gulp for air, his pulse drumming frantically. He presses his back against the wall and slides down into a crouch, trying to breathe more evenly but finding it impossible. With buzzing fingers, he fumbles for his phone. 

“Hey, man! About time,” Simon says. “I haven’t heard from you in _days_ , I was going to do the sneaky thing and ask your sister but, you know, fine line between sneaky and creepy. How have you been? It’s actually perfect timing that you called because I just got out of my first NA meeting, which was a _trip_ , let me tell you, and — Jace?”

Jace shuts his eyes and blows out a long, steady breath. “Tell me about the meeting.”

Simon reliably chatters away. He gives Jace the highlights of sitting in a circle and sharing, wishing he could partake in the tepid coffee just so he had something to do with his hands. He says Magnus is helping too, that he even tried to talk to Raphael about it but predictably came up against a brick wall; Raphael was only interested in helping if Simon provided particulars, which he assures Jace he would not. “I’m drinking twice my usual amount of blood,” Simon finishes. “But I’m coping.”

“I’m glad,” Jace says quietly. 

“So… You gonna tell me why you’re calling?”

Jace presses his tongue against his teeth until it aches. “I saw Valentine.” 

Simon’s inhale is sharp and sudden. “Oh, man.”

“Yeah,” Jace agrees, tipping his head back until crown touches cool stone. He spills the story of his night to Simon, oddly calmed by his quiet presence on the other end of the line. “I don’t know what I thought would happen. Like he’d ever give me any answers. He’s been lying to me as long as I’ve been alive.”

“You know…” Simon’s voice is thoughtful. “It probably wouldn’t be that difficult to find your family.”

“Yeah, right,” Jace says. “I’ll check the milk cartons.”

“That reference is dated, yet somehow charming,” Simon says. “But I’m serious. You guys are always talking about how there are no new Shadowhunters, so you had to come from somewhere. Maybe Valentine lied about exactly when you were born, but if you looked for baby boys who were born within a few years of Valentine going off the map — especially ones who died or disappeared — I mean, how hard would it be? And you probably even know the area. I mean, if he had to grab you and go — not to make you sound like takeout — then it was near where he was at the time. Idris. Right?”

Dumbfounded, Jace doesn’t know what to say. The unexpected thrum of hope drowns out the panic for a moment. “No, yeah,” he stumbles, sounding like an idiot. “That’s — that is —”

“Logical?” Simon suggests smugly. “Plausible? _Genius_?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Lewis,” Jace says automatically. That feels fortifying too, more like himself. “But not bad, for an accounting student.”

“I can account for everything,” Simon joked. “Another skill to put on my resumé. Feel better?” 

“I could kiss you.” Lack of practice has dulled his abilities in this area. “If I was with you.”

Clumsy as the line was, Simon still sounds lip-bitingly interested. “You know, I’m supposed to be detoxing from you, but I can still smell you in my bed. I’m supposed to be getting away from you but you’re inescapable. How’s that for irony?”

The last marks Simon left on him were erased when Jace healed himself, but sometimes he finds his fingertips have travelled to the inside of his elbow anyway, absently tracing over the skin. “Yeah,” Jace says again, ineloquent, expressing everything. “Yeah.”

 

 

 

Alec tracks him down on the roof of the Institute, which doesn’t surprise Jace. Maybe a part of him had even been hoping for it, and that made him seek out the spot in the first place — the site of so many conversations that would feel too stifling within the bounds of the building below.

“I heard you went to see Valentine,” Alec says.

Jace huffs in disbelief. “Can anyone do anything in this place without everyone finding out about it?”

“Yeah, apparently,” Alec says. “Secret addiction to vampire venom seems to be going around.” Steady and straightforward, the look on his face demands an honest answer. “How did I miss that?”

That’s the one thing everyone wants to know, but how could they not have missed it? Alec had checked on him, asked how he was; Jace avoided him on purpose, deflected his questions. He refused to move back into the Institute so no one could look at him too closely. “I wasn’t exactly advertising.” 

Alec shakes his head and shrugs, as though to say _doesn’t matter_. “We’re parabatai.”

Jace shrugs. “We’ve both had a lot of practice at hiding things.”

Or maybe all they’d ever felt from each other was pain, so they couldn’t recognize anything else. The only time Alec ever felt different to Jace was when he was happy.

Alec dips his head in acknowledgement, but notes, “Just not our trips down to the cells.”

Jace releases a soft, almost amused sigh and smirks a little. “Apparently not.”

He leans against the ledge, feeling its brick edge dig pleasant-unpleasant into his spine. He keeps his back to the brightness and bustle of the city, comforted by the way the buzz of cars and people drowns out his thoughts somewhat. After a moment Alec drifts over to gaze out. They stand next to each other looking in different directions. It feels like the very definition of what a parabatai is: alone but together. “What happened?”

“Mind games,” Jace says. “Manipulations. The usual.”

“Why did you go?”

“Glutton for punishment.”

“That I already knew.” Alec’s hand comes down on Jace’s shoulder, a sure and warm weight. “Get what you want?”

Jace presses his lips together until his mouth it a thin, tense line. “I’m never going to get what I want from him.” Valentine isn’t capable of giving it. Jace’s father is dead. He never had one.

Alec shifts to face him, hip against the bricks and arms crossed. “Good,” he says. “Keep telling yourself that. Over and over until you believe it.”

Jace starts to say that he does believe it, but when he meets Alec’s eyes the statement dies on his lips. He’s lied to Alec plenty but it never feels right or easy; he’s like a human Soul Sword. Instead Jace nods. “I’ll try.”

Alec’s chin dips in an answering nod. Good. “The other thing —”

Jace groans and grimaces like a spoiled kid being told to eat his vegetables. “Everyone does this,” he complains. “First it’s _so you’re an addict_ and then it’s _so you like guys_.”

Subtle humor shades Alec’s expression. “You’re making assumptions. You don’t know what I was gonna say.”

Jace arches an eyebrow. “What were you going to say?”

Alec pauses noticeably and then says, “So you’re an addict and you like guys.”

Jace laughs. “Very original.”

“You know if you want to talk about it with me, you can.”

They’ve never been able to talk about this, which was maybe the problem. “What is there to say?” Jace asks, a little obtuse, a little guarded. “What difference does it make, just because I’m —” The word gets stuck in his throat. He decides he can use any number of euphemisms; he doesn’t even have to say anything. Alec knows what he means. He doesn’t have to say it. He never has to say it.

But this is Alec.

“Bisexual,” Jace finishes belatedly. “Because I’m bisexual.”

It’s the first time he’s ever said it about himself.

Alec nods, accepting that. “It doesn’t make a difference, and it does,” he says. “It was an important part of yourself you kept private and now you can’t, which wasn’t really your choice. That matters.”

Since the venom it feels like all of Jace’s insulation is gone. He feels bare, open to attack. But the world didn’t end because he said it. No one even seemed particularly surprised. To think you’ve been guarding something so intensely and then nobody even cares. It’s strange, reassurance knotted up with something more confusing. What had he been holding onto?

“If you say so,” Jace says. “You’d know.”

“I would,” Alec agrees. “Plus, my boyfriend’s bisexual, so I’m an expert by association. I also head the local chapter of LGBTQ Shadowhunters.”

He’s so dry that Jace almost believes it for a second before he bursts out laughing. Alec smiles, small and genuine. “There probably should be one,” Jace muses. 

“I’ll ask the head of the Institute to send out a memo,” Alec says. “There’s just one more thing.”

Jace waits.

Alec sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth, face caught in a wince that is somehow both judgmental and pitying. “Clary _and_ Simon?”

Jace starts laughing again.

“All I’m saying is, no accounting for taste,” Alec adds. 

“We can’t all have your luck,” Jace tells him. “You’re not gonna give me shit about wanting to be with Simon even after the biting?”

Alec’s eyebrows raise in slight surprise. “Do you want to be with Simon?”

Jace opens his mouth and shuts it again. He hadn’t actually meant to say that. “You know what I mean.”

Alec, thankfully, lets it pass. “I’m not going to pretend I think it’s the best idea. But you always do the opposite of whatever you’re told. To be honest I’m not even going to bother.” He shrugs. “And Magnus likes Simon, so.”

“Which is what matters,” Jace says wryly. 

They head back towards the stairs. On the way Alec remarks, “By the way: glowing runes?”

 

 

 

The first words out of Clary’s mouth are, “You’ve been avoiding me.”

She’s outside the elevator when the doors open, so Jace doesn’t have a chance to get his bearings before he’s caught up in a fury of red hair. He’d been up in Inquisitor Herondale’s office again trying to secure clearance to return to the field, but it seems he’s still too much of a risk. No longer a Morgenstern but still a Lightwood: someone who fraternizes with Downworlders and makes trouble, can’t be trusted. Of course, she’d implied, if he was willing to volunteer to have his mysterious new abilities tested, then perhaps they could work out a deal. He refused. But how is he supposed to keep busy if they won’t give him anything to keep busy with?

The meeting left him with the kind of slow-burning anger that makes his fingers twitch, and now Clary is here to force the confrontation Jace has been skirting since his reappearance.

He has to catch the elevator doors with both hands before they close on him. “Would you accept ‘waiting for the right moment’ as an excuse?”

Clary folds her arms and raises her eyebrows expectantly. “No.”

_How about ‘I stole your boyfriend and I feel really bad about it but not as bad as I should’?_ He quashes the thought and says instead, “I’m sorry. You’re right. I’ve been avoiding you.”

It takes the winds out of her sails, but she straightens her spine and fires herself back up in seconds. “I had to find out from _Valentine_ that you’re not my brother. He said you’ve known since the massacre. Jace, that was over a month ago.”

Jace swallows hard, jaw tensing. “You were with Simon then,” he says, and lets the implication hang uncomfortably in the air between them.

Clary is quiet for a moment. “I guess I don’t have to ask if you were the someone else.”

Jace wishes he could take a step back and let the elevator swallow him whole. “Clary…”

She shakes her head. “You could’ve come to me — either of you. I know it wasn’t your fault, at first. You were just trying to save him. But instead you let the lies keep piling up. You were —” Her voice wavers and she takes a moment before she charges on. “I trusted both of you more than anybody else.”

Jace finally moves forward just enough that the doors can slide closed silently behind him, a wall of chrome suddenly at his back. Again, he says, “I’m sorry.”

They look at the floor, their shoulders up around their ears, uncertain and farther from solid ground than they’ve ever been. Almost angrily, Clary asks, “Are you okay?”

Jace presses his lips together. “Getting closer.”

“Are you —” She falters, but he can see from her expression that it’s because she has so many questions that they’re stumbling all over each other to get to her lips. She wants to know everything but she’s as afraid to hear the answers as he is to give them. “You keep so much inside.” 

It’s not what he expects. At a loss, he says, “Where else am I supposed to keep it?”

Clary meets his eyes unflinchingly, so perhaps she’s not as uncertain as he thought. “You try so hard to make yourself numb, to not feel anything. Where’s it getting you?”

Annoyance flares. “Everyone wants to analyze me. I know I fucked up. Okay? I know. That doesn’t mean everyone gets to pick me apart. I’m sorry. I swear to God, I am. Can we just leave it at that?”

Why is it so terrible that sometimes he craves the quiet? Everything can get so intensely overwhelming that occasionally he’d rather press pause on his life. Sometimes he’d rather have nothing than much too much something. 

“Leave it wherever you want,” Clary says with a sigh. “We don’t owe each other anything now.”

 

 

 

There are texts from Simon on Jace’s phone when he wakes up and when he goes to sleep. A buzz in the middle of the day will herald some irreverent comment or life update, like a photo of the donuts at Simon’s NA meeting that he’s sad he can’t eat. Jace doesn’t tell anyone that they’re still talking. He only responds to every other message, and he has to ease into something approaching normal conversation. At first it’s all passive responses, but those give way to complaints about the Institute and the Inquisitor, confessions about Clary, appeals for advice. 

_The glowing is hot but inexplicable_ , Simon says. _Tests sound annoying but might be nice to get an answer_.

So Jace agrees to be the Inquisitor’s guinea pig, even though it puts him in close proximity to Clary on a regular basis. Maybe it’ll be good for them to throw heavy weapons at each other for a while. Works out the frustration. 

The biggest issue with the Inquisitor is that she doesn’t find his explanations about how he activated a rune without his stele all that convincing. But he can’t help that. He has no explanation. 

“I don’t know,” he says tightly, over and over. “I was in pain. I would have done anything to make it stop. The rune just ignited on its own.”

He wonders how far is too far for the Clave when it comes to experimentation. Does the curious look in the Inquisitor’s eyes mean she’s willing to put him through some serious jabs just to see if she can get the same reaction a second time? Is it just Downworlders who get strapped to chairs and tortured? How did they define the line clearly enough to know when Valentine stepped over it? 

It doesn’t matter. Jace can’t seem to do it again. And every time he requests a return to active service, he’s denied. 

When he’s not wallowing in self-pity or throwing himself into training, Jace enlists Alec and Izzy in the search for his biological family. They spend hours poring over records of missing Shadowhunter children from the early nineties, which is more morbid than he expected, somehow. He tells Simon as much in a text.

_Chin up_ , Simon writes. _I’m going to send you a really good video of a dog wearing sunglasses_.

“The Whiteflowers lost their son in 1990 in an accident…” Isabelle reads off the screen, brows drawn together. “But there’s the autopsy report, so it’s probably not you…”

Jace has stacks of specially-requested files in front of him, sheaves of paper that were never transferred into the computer system. “Aiden Penweaver disappeared in 1995, but that might be too late. And Michael Wayland did have a son, also named Jonathan. That was a big one that year, it seems.”

Over at his own table, Alec snorts. Jace and Izzy look at each other and then over at him.

“It wasn’t that funny,” Jace says.

Isabelle adds, “You know we’re reading about dead kids, don’t you?”

Alec gives her an unimpressed look. “No, it’s not that — Stephen and Celine Herondale were expecting when they both passed.”

“Again,” Izzy says, “Not funny.”

“No, just — imagine Jace is a _Herondale_.”

Now it’s Alec and Izzy’s turn to exchange some silent communication that leads to peals of stifled laughter. “Oh god,” she says. “That’s it, then. That’s the one.” 

“What?” Jace demands.

“It just goes to figure, golden boy,” Izzy says. “You _would_ end up Shadowhunter royalty.” 

He rolls his eyes. “Shut up.”

“The Inquisitor is enough of a pain in the ass that you probably _are_ related to her,” Alec remarks. “Must run in the family.”

Isabelle spins around in her chair so she’s facing them, keenly interested. “It’s an easy one to confirm or eliminate as long as she’s here. Wouldn’t have to track down the Penweavers or the Whiteflowers. Just a little swab, give me some time in the lab…”

“Where was this interest in DNA testing when I thought I was dating my own sister, huh?” Jace says as he leans back in his chair. There’s an odd sensation bubbling in his chest. There is a very real possibility that his birth family is close. He could be related to someone he’s crossed paths with a dozen times without thinking twice about it. In a couple of days, he could know exactly who he is. “Do you think she’d do it?”

“If not, we have sneakier methods,” Izzy says with a shrug. “Ask her. Worst thing is she says no.”

“But she’ll probably want to know as badly as you do,” Alec continues. “She doesn’t have any other family now.”

Jace taps his fingers against the table, brain whirring. He pictures Imogen Herondale and tries to recognize something in her, but she’s so staid, so reserved, so unyielding that it makes it impossible — until he remembers what Clary had said to him. He keeps so much inside. Maybe it’s an inherited trait. 

Maybe he has a biological grandmother now. Maybe she can tell him what his mother was like. 

Jace knows deep down that all the praise he’s earned ultimately has very little to do with him — and even less knowing, as he does now, about the angel blood. It’s biology. He has an edge that was given to him without his knowledge, that’s all. Anyone with an extra shot could do the same. It’s special only in its utter randomness. 

But this, well. This could really be something. 

 

 

 

Simon is not the kind of person who is embarrassed to text back too fast. Sometimes Jace will wait fifteen minutes to half an hour on purpose just so he doesn’t look desperate, but Simon is always quick to reply, eager to talk. Still, Jace tries not to think too much of it when a day passes without a response. People get busy. Simon is not beholden to Jace every minute of every day.

But then another day passes, and another. At that point, Jace is too embarrassed to message Simon again without getting anything in return. Around day five, he’s furious but refuses to acknowledge it. He just irritates everyone in the Ops Center with his attitude until Alec orders him to take a night off. 

“A night off from _what_?” Jace grouses. Alec isn’t even in _charge_. “I’m not on duty.”

Alec sighs, then takes a deep breath with his eyes closed like his patience is hanging by a thread. “Then you have even less reason to be here.”

So Jace goes. 

The meetings Izzy drags him to come with warnings about cross-addiction, but Jace decides to get a pint from the Hunter’s Moon anyway. Maia serves him a virgin piña colada instead. “Just looking out for you, Shadowhunter.”

He takes a sullen sip. “Don’t do me any favors.”

“What favor? That drink is fourteen dollars and I expect a sizeable tip for all the moping you’re doing at my bar.” 

“I didn’t realize there was a tax for sulking.”

Maia gives him a cheeky little smile. “There is when I’m in charge.”

Verbal sparring with Maia isn’t a bad way to spend an evening. Jace is just starting to relax when she taps the surface of the bar next to his empty drink and shoots a pointed glance towards the door. “Dream boy,” she says. “One o’clock.”

Jace seizes up. “He’s not my —” he starts, but she cuts him off with a flatly uninterested look.

He hates not knowing how to react, whether he should return the favor by ignoring Simon or if he has grounds to demand an explanation. He chooses the former, curling his fingers around his glass and peering into its depleted contents like it’s a new tool for scrying. Read the pineapple dredges and find out your future. 

Amused, Maia takes the glass out of his hands and says, “Act normal. Or at least your version of it. Refill?”

“Only if it comes with rum.”

“Mm, what’s that? Can’t hear you.”

She vanishes, leaving Jace to deal with the ghost at his back on his own. It’s almost like he can sense Simon’s hesitancy, his hovering, though Jace doesn’t know if that’s just wishful thinking. Even steeled, he’s still startled when there’s a light touch to his back.

“Hey, man,” Simon says.

Irritation flares. “Hey, man,” Jace mimics. 

Simon takes a seat, though he leaves one stool empty between them. For some reason that annoys Jace too. “How are you?”

“Great,” Jace says, hitting the _t_ too hard, tongue almost clicking. “Just great.”

“That’s good.” The encouragement in his voice feels patronizing. “Hey, um… You know, sorry that I —”

Jace cuts him off with an exaggerated shrug and shakes his head a little. “No need.”

Maia has returned by this point, plunking a plain glass of ice water in front of Jace and handing Simon a shot of blood. She takes one look at the both of them, rolls her eyes, and throws up her hands before turning on her heel to go. But she pauses when she notices Simon visibly wavering over downing the blood. “It’s rabbit,” she tells him, tone much kinder than it is when she speaks to Jace. “After that night you had, I figured you’d want to take it easy.”

Simon gives her a warm smile, ducking his head in a quick thank-you before some other patron requests Maia’s attention. 

_What night?_ presses at Jace’s lips, but he doesn’t voice it.

Simon’s mouth is a little redder after the shot. Looking at him makes Jace’s stomach clench and his shoulders relax all at once, a weirdly contradictory feeling that he has come to associate with Simon. Comforting and unsettling. He drags his gaze up to meet Simon’s eyes and finds the expression there is just as heated as he feels, a look that makes Jace want to lick the sheen of blood from Simon’s lips. He’s done that before. He knows the taste.

“Jace,” Simon says, but that’s all he has time for before Jace grabs him by the shirt and hauls him towards the back door.

In the alley behind the bar, Jace tugs him closer so Simon will crowd him against the bricks, Jace’s half-gloved hands cupping Simon’s face to draw him in for a kiss. Simon presses his palms to the wall on either side of Jace’s head, caging him in but not touching him. “ _Jace_ ,” he says again, but this time he moans it into Jace’s mouth. It sounds better that way.

Jace’s nails scrap over Simon’s scalp, the back of his neck. He runs his hands over Simon’s shoulders and chest and stomach. For the first time he feels like he’s actually allowed — everyone knows and nothing happened. Neither of them is promised to anybody else. This is something he can actually have and it makes him hungrier than he thought was possible. He can’t stop touching Simon but he wishes Simon would return the favor.

“Touch me,” Jace demands, punctuates it but giving Simon’s lower lip a quick, sharp bite. Simon makes a broken little sound and gives in, pinning Jace with his body, no gap between them from chest to hip. Simon’s hands slide up the back of Jace’s shirt, mapping out his skin greedily before sliding around to cup Jace’s erection through his jeans. Jace has to pull away just to gasp for air but Simon has no such need and instead trails his mouth down over Jace’s throat. Jace seizes up with nerves but Simon moves along briskly, kissing Jace’s collarbone and even his chest through his shirt. 

Jace jerks Simon up by the hair for another kiss. He doesn’t think twice about slipping his tongue into Simon’s mouth until he catches the razor tip of a fang and pain blooms, blood spills. 

They break apart, Simon’s forehead dropping to Jace’s shoulder before he takes a step back, almost swaying on his feet. He edges closer again with slightly unfocused eyes, so Jace pushes him away — lightly and without force, like he might if Simon were drunk. Simon stumbles back against the wall opposite, the entire breadth of the alley between them.

Jace’s mouth is full of the metallic burn of blood but momentary panic has cleared his head enough that he can finally ask, “Where have you been?”

Simon averts his gaze. “I’m sorry about that. I shouldn’t have just fallen off the face of the earth.”

It doesn’t escape Jace that that is not an answer. “I thought…” He clears his throat. “What did Maia mean before? You...had a bad night? Did something happen?”

“Finish what you were saying first. You thought what?”

Also not an answer. “That you didn’t…you know, want this. Me. Anymore.” Embarrassed, Jace tips his head back against the wall so he doesn’t have to look at Simon. “Or at all, ever, in the first place.”

“Hey,” Simon says, sharply enough that Jace meets his eyes. “I do. Want you. It’s just —” He presses his lips together tightly, anxious frustration on his face. “You’re not going to like it.”

Dread pools in Jace’s stomach. “What?”

Simon does some showy breathing choreography, a routine of exhales and inhalations designed to stall. “I was… I was feeling really down, you know,” he says finally. “Bummed about everything and — and hungry. It’s hard to go back to the regular stuff when you’ve gotten used to —” He focuses briefly on the side of Jace’s neck before glancing away. “I came here to pick up some blood and I ran into this guy from the clan. Quinn.”

Jace waits, braced.

“They’ve all been on me since the Daylighter thing, trying to win me over or whatever,” Simon continues. “Quinn got some shots for us, on him. Plasma. It made me… It was like getting drunk for the first time all over again, or stoned, I don’t know. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. He wanted to go out and I — I’ve felt like such shit lately, after everything. I’ve been really lonely, Clary still isn’t… Anyway. I went along with it. But he took me to this bleeder den.” It couldn’t be said that Simon didn’t face things head on. He locked eyes with Jace. “I fed on a girl there.”

Anger and jealousy braid themselves together in the pit of Jace’s stomach. He’s been killing himself lately, doing everything he can to prove himself to everyone and keeping away from Simon just so no one could say he was tripping up. But while he was doing all that, _Simon_ got to give in? He wasn’t getting it from Jace, so he got it from somebody else? Didn’t —

Didn’t what they had matter at all?

“When I woke up the next day, I didn’t know what happened. I was covered in blood. I didn’t remember most of the night. But the girl, she…” Simon wets his lips. “She died. I didn’t do it!” he interjects hastily at the horrified look on Jace’s face. “That was Quinn. But it doesn’t mean I’m not responsible. I put her in danger, too. Just like I did to you.”

Jace mulls that over and swallows, hard. “Did someone bring Quinn in?”

Simon looks a little confused, but then says, “I killed him. Is that really all you have to say?”

“No,” Jace says, edgy. “I’m just getting started, actually. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“You’re not the only one having a hard time.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t hurt anyone else. Just me.”

“Stop acting like I’m just this — this tool you used. I’m in this as much as you are.”

“Until you don’t get what you need anymore,” Jace says, callous. “And then you go stick your fangs in someone else.”

Simon colors, splotchy like his blood doesn’t move right under his skin. “Fuck you,” he says. “You know I don’t want to do that to anyone.”

Jace does know that, and it bursts the bubble of his righteous anger somewhat. He deflates, slumping back against the wall.

Simon, perhaps sensing the shift in mood, adds, “Least of all you. I don’t want blood from you, Jace. I want — I want you to talk to me and tell me things. Which is ironic, I know, because I totally disappeared. But I couldn’t — I was so ashamed of what I did. I can’t control myself. And if I can’t control myself with someone I don’t even know, then how am I going to do it with you? Even now I almost gave in, and that was just a scratch. You’re in a bloody line of work. It’s not going to be the last time we get too close to crossing the line.”

For whatever reason, that makes Jace feel calmer. It should fill him with worry, should reignite his dread, but it doesn’t. He’s not sure what that says about him. “Do you think we ever could?” he asks. “Be together without…that part of it?”

Simon blinks at him. “Are you talking about us having sex? After I told you I almost killed someone?”

“Yeah.” Inappropriate or not, he is.

It seems like Simon wants to laugh but he rolls with it instead. “Maybe. If we…” He coughs noisily. “Took precautions.”

Jace lifts an eyebrow. “Precautions?”

“Yeah, you know…so I don’t bite you.” 

Jace stares at him. “Have you thought about this?”

Simon shrugs, opens his mouth and shuts it. “I — yeah?”

Jace sinks his teeth into his lip, sucks on the skin for a second. Expectantly, “Well?”

Simon fidgets, foot tapping. “Gags?”

Jace never would have thought he’d live long enough to hear the word _gags_ come out of Simon Lewis’ mouth. Or see one go into it. “Jesus.”

“It’s an option.”

Jace thinks about it, pictures it: Simon with his mouth open but unable to do anything with it, straining against it, silent. He shakes his head. “I want to be able to kiss you,” he says quietly. “And… Maybe I don’t _hate_ listening to you talk.”

Simon’s lips twitch. “Really?”

Jace rolls his eyes. “Actually, you know what, I take it back.”

He does smile then. “Too late. Okay. How about…restraints?”

Jace shivers. “They’d have to be strong. To stop you from breaking them.”

When Simon looks at him, it’s like that put-on nerviness melts, his spine straightening and shoulders loosening up. He pushes off the wall and steps towards Jace until he’s back where he was before, near enough that Jace could count his eyelashes if he were so inclined. “It’s something to think about.”

Jace curls his fingers in the loops of Simon’s belt. “I’m thinking.”

“Or…” Simon kisses him, fleeting and careful, at odds with the hand that slides back down to toy with the button of Jace’s jeans. “We could give it a test run right now. Without assistance.” 

It’s tempting, with Simon’s cool body so close that Jace can feel its sluggish heartbeat. But instead he gently moves Simon’s hand away. “Not here. Not like this.”

“What, do you —” Simon searches his face and suddenly grins. “Oh my g—, you want it to be _special_.”

Jace pinches him hard; Simon yelps and then laughs. “Isn’t it?”

Simon rubs his side, smiling. “Yeah,” he says. “It is.” 

 

 

 

Jace has gone to enough NA meetings by now that the regulars know his name, but he still hasn’t managed to say anything. He never gets so jittery as he does following Izzy on and off the train to a church downtown where they sit in a circle in a wood-paneled room and talk about what brought them there. Izzy remains as composed as ever in comparison, her back straight and legs folded as she listens, nodding sympathetically at the right moments and offering smiles when the person speaking looks shaky. Jace tries to stop his leg from vibrating while his fingers drum ceaselessly against the lukewarm cup of bitter coffee that he holds the whole time but never finishes. He’s far from the only one twitching. 

“You can try sharing, if you want,” Izzy says every week. 

She doesn’t talk every time, but she talks enough that Jace is beginning to realize how little he knows about his sister. At least this part of her. Like everyone else, he accepted at face value that what she presented to the world was how she really felt: bright and capable and content. 

“Sometimes I replay the things I said and I can’t believe I said them,” she says. “I became this person I didn’t recognize. I’ve always thought of myself as someone who cared about other people. Really cared and tried to stand up for people, look out for them.” She takes a significant pause. “But now I don’t know. I used people. I manipulated them. I pushed my family away. I got angry when they helped me and when they didn’t. I didn’t want help. I thought I was being self-sufficient, handling it on my own.” She smiles, faintly. “I wasn’t handling shit.”

Once she’s done, she looks at him — not expectant, but gently encouraging. And he thinks about how much it took for her to be open in front of all these strangers. In front of him. And how everyone in this room does the same thing week after week, except for him. His story isn’t singular. He isn’t the only one who’s hurting.

That makes it a little easier to swallow around the lump in his throat.

“Um,” Jace starts. An auspicious beginning, that. “Hi, I… Well.” He tries to remember their decided-upon stories. He and his sister were in the military. They became dependent on prescription pills first, then heroin. PTSD. Trauma. Mundane things, words Shadowhunters didn’t really use. “I’ve been…clean, I guess, for a couple of weeks now. I’m trying, but it’s really… It’s confusing. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel. Every decision I make seems like the wrong one, but…” He shrugs. “I felt like that before, too.”

The counselor tilts her head. “Care to elaborate?”

Jace clutches the flimsy paper cup so tightly he’s afraid it’s going to buckle. He makes himself set it down at his feet. He hears himself say _no_ in his head, but when his mouth opens, he says, “There’s this guy I would, uh, use with. He had gotten hurt, so I gave him…some of what I had. And then after that we’d always do it together. Secretly. We hadn’t actually been friends before that or anything. Well, we sort of were. But we got closer. And I — I started to want that just as much as any other part of it. And that’s the part I still want. But I —"

He shuts his eyes, blocking out the room for a moment so he can remember being tucked close with Simon in the dark silence of the boathouse. His heartbeat in his ears and an ocean in his veins, the waves pulling him away from the shore. Being hurt and then being soothed. 

“I don’t know if it’s smart, but I miss it,” he says after a moment. “The closeness.”

Jace isn’t surprised when Izzy brings it up on their break. She hovers by the stale snacks while Jace trades his now-cold coffee for a fresh one that won’t taste any better. “I know you’re touchy about Simon,” she begins.

“I don’t mean to be,” he says with a sigh. “I’m just defensive, I guess.”

Izzy smiles. “I understand the impulse, with Simon.” He gives her a sidelong look and she laughs. “I’m not moving in on your boyfriend, chill. I’m just trying to keep an eye out. I know how this can go.”

She never brings up Raphael. Sometimes she’ll allude to people she’s hurt, though it’s never by name; she keeps her details vague but honest. Jace knows they all have things they lock away, even here. He’s aware that it takes time to sift through everything, but the vigilance — watching yourself and watching each other for signs of backsliding — can make it feel like you have to choke it all up at once.

Jace nudges her. He tries to keep his voice light so that she can take the out if she wants it. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Mm…” Izzy uses a napkin to pick up a pink-frosted donut. She picks at it sprinkle by sprinkle, plucking them off and popping them in her mouth before she takes her first bite. “Okay.”

He’s surprised. “Okay.”

It still takes Izzy a moment to speak. “It’s impossible not to feel something for the person you’re in this situation with. I — I really thought that I had feelings for Raphael. But now I think, maybe…” She looks away, red mouth twisting. “I think maybe that was just my way of justifying what I was doing. Which was using him. He never wanted to, you know. He only did it after I begged him. And he wouldn’t have done it again if I hadn’t… If I hadn’t cut myself and put my blood on his mouth.” She meets Jace’s eyes. “After that we were in the loop.”

Jace stares at her, unsure of what to feel or what to say. “Izzy…” is all he can finally offer, aching.

She brushes her fingers over her cheek impatiently. “I’m working on it,” she says. “But he won’t forgive me, and he shouldn’t.”

They go sit on one of the benches ringing the room. Nearly everyone has broken off into pairs and trios to talk quietly, so they give Jace and Izzy their space. Still, they don’t speak for a few long minutes. Izzy eats her donut and gets herself together, wallpapers over her vulnerabilities with a more familiar poise. Locks away her guilt. How do you make amends for something that can’t be mended?

She clears her throat softly, like a warning that the conversation is about to resume, before she says, “So that’s why I… After what you shared, I just want to know what you’re thinking. About Simon. Alec thinks you’re pretty serious about him.”

Amused, Jace says, “Talking about me behind my back, huh?”

“Always.”

His smile is wry but brief. “I get it, it’s complicated. But I…” Why is it still so hard to say? “I was always attracted to Simon. Since we met, maybe.”

Simon was handsome, he was funny. He was fun to provoke because it was easy to get a rise out of him. He was good. He was normal. Jace suspects that their overlapping affections for Clary might not have been a deterrent, either. 

Izzy lifts both eyebrows. “Since you _met_?”

Jace rolls his eyes, grumbling, “He’s cute.”

Genuine delight sparks in her expression. “You don’t have to tell me that.”

He ducks his head and starts to curl his fingers into fists so his nails can ground half-moons into his palms. But then he makes himself stop, pressing flat hands to his legs. Izzy touches his knuckles lightly. “Maybe that doesn’t matter because of the situation we’re in now. But I just don’t care, Izzy,” he admits, hushed. “I don’t. I want him, I don’t care why. Is that bad?”

“I don’t know,” Izzy says slowly. “I really don’t. You have to be careful — more careful than other people.”

There is still a sore spot on Jace’s tongue from the scratch of Simon’s fang. “I know,” he says, and looks at her. “Actually, maybe you can give me a little bit of advice about that.”

 

 

 

“Am I the best sister in the world or the best sister in the world? It’s a trick question, obviously.”

Izzy hops onto the desk where Jace has been buried in surveillance footage for the last several hours, searching for a lead in the latest mission he’s not allowed to go on. He’s happy to abandon it, sitting back and studying her with interest. “Did you find out about the…?”

Izzy snorts. “One track mind, huh? No, it’s not that.” Her expression sweetens and softens. “I’ve got your DNA results.”

Jace straightens imperceptibly, giving no indication of the fact that his heart is suddenly racing. “And?”

Izzy bites her lip but it can’t stop her smile. “And your grandmother would like to see you in her office.”

For a second, Jace doesn’t think he heard her right. But then Izzy gives him a little nod of confirmation, grinning now, and he’s on his feet so he can pull her into a tight hug. She hugs him back fiercely even as she says, “Go on, get out of here. That’s a woman who appreciates punctuality.”

Jace laughs. He’s quick to make it to the elevator, but uncertainty settles in his stomach on the ride up. Things have never been particularly warm between him and the Inquisitor, though she’s never particularly warm with anyone. It occurs to him that she might be disappointed to find her long-lost grandson is Valentine Morgenstern’s great failed experiment, someone so buffeted and broken that he spent weeks begging a friend to drink his blood. Someone who has never hidden his contempt from her or stepped back from an argument out of respect for his elders. 

His steps slow as he walks down the hall towards her door and he takes one deep breath before he knocks. He stands at attention until he hears her beckon him in.

Inquisitor Herondale stands in front of her desk, one ringed hand resting on its surface. There is no visible change in her expression at first, but then she smiles slightly. Jace has never seen her smile before. “Now I know where that bold defiance comes from,” she says. “If you could have heard half the fights I had with your father.”

His father. Jace’s throat is tight and all he can manage in response is, “Yeah?”

“Mm.” She tilts her head towards the couch against the opposite wall before she moves to sit; Jace unlocks his grip on his wrist and follows her over. “You’ll forgive me. I never thought I would ever — I could never have imagined that you would ever be standing before me.”

Jace has never heard emotion crack the Inquisitor’s voice before, either. Unexpectedly, she cups his cheek with a strong, firm hand, turning him towards the light so she can look at him properly for the first time. Does he look like his father too? At the moment Jace can’t remember if he’s ever seen a picture of Stephen Herondale. He never had a reason to look.

“You mother had that too,” she says after a moment. Her hand drops. “That little patch of brown in your eyes. And that golden hair. There’s a lot of Celine in you.”

His voice comes out too rough. “What was she like?”

Imogen’s pause is notable. “Quiet. A little delicate, perhaps.”

He hears the euphemism and he remembers what Valentine had said. Jace doesn’t want to repeat it, doesn’t want to sound like he’s giving credence to Valentine’s words, but he wants to know the truth, too. “Valentine said something similar, only it wasn’t as polite.”

“No, I can’t imagine it was.” Imogen sighs. “She was — Celine struggled. She would sometimes hear or see things that weren’t there. After your father passed it was harder. I think perhaps she felt isolated. I don’t — I will admit that I don’t know quite how she felt then, and that’s my own burden to bear.” 

Jace had poured over the scant details on file during his research, gaze scanning without emotion over key phrases that had had no relevance to him, then. Symptoms of psychosis. Refusal of treatment. Now he tries to picture her, a hazy blonde outline, pregnant and desperate and all alone. “She killed herself.”

“Yes,” Imogen says gently.

That’s the thing Jace keeps for himself at meetings. He hasn’t mentioned it to anyone; he’s not even sure he’d have the words to do it if he tried. He’s so used to having that black hole inside him, that yawning endless chasm, that he’s not sure how it could be shaped into something that makes sense to someone else. He’s wanted everything to stop, sometimes. He’s wanted everything to be quiet. 

Jace never thought of it as seeking death, just accepting it. It might be part of his duty someday, his responsibility. Sometimes that responsibility feels more welcoming than other times.

Imogen is watching him too perceptively. “From my understanding, you’ve struggled, too.”

Jace closes his eyes. Maybe that was his inheritance. “Yes.”

“But you’ve been seeking help in the mundane world for your…problem.”

The word _problem_ rankles, so it’s with more than a hint of defiance that he says, “My boyfriend suggested it.”

She pauses. “The —”

“Vampire, yeah,” Jace says. “Simon.”

“Does it help?”

That wasn’t the question he’d been anticipating. “Uh, yeah, actually. I think it does.”

“Then I’m glad,” Imogen says. 

When Jace meets her eyes, he finds her uncharacteristically hesitant. It makes him realize that she might actually be as worried about this as he is, unsure about what steps to take to bridge this gap they both want so badly to cross. So he reaches over to take her hand. 

Again, Imogen smiles. “Do you think it’s time I gave you a speech about your birthright?”

That makes Jace smile, too. “You can if you want. Any good heirlooms?”

“Funny you should ask,” Imogen says.

 

 

 

Jace calls Simon immediately. He makes it to the end of the hallway before he gives in and dials, ducking around the corner and tucking himself into the alcove to wait impatiently for Simon to pick up. Simon doesn’t even get a chance to say hello before Jace launches into every detail of what happened, finishing almost wonderingly, “So I guess I have a different last name now.”

“I’m not updating your contact information again.” The smile in his voice is audible. “It’s Jace Shadowhunter from now until forever. Which is a promise I can keep.”

Jace grins. “Well, at least it’s accurate.”

“Hm, Jace Herondale is weirdly chill. Am I gonna be able to get away with anything now? Was it only Wayland who was a smartass who wanted to throw down all the time?”

It’s the first time Jace has heard someone call him that and he takes a moment to breathe — not because he’s overwhelmed, but because this feels so impossible. The relief of knowing where he came from is so staggering that nothing bitter can infiltrate the sweet. Jace Herondale. That’s who he is.

Softly, Simon asks, “How do you feel, man?”

“Good,” Jace tells him, and means it. “Really good.”

“Are you doing anything tonight? We should celebrate. You basically have like twenty years of birthdays to catch up on.”

Jace bites his lip, a thrill traveling up his spine. “Celebrate how?”

“Well, I know this place with amazing — Wait.” He stops. “Jace. Are you doing a sex voice right now?”

How did Simon get so many girls when he’s so stumblingly obvious about everything all the time?

“I don’t have a _sex voice_ ,” Jace says. “I’m just… I mean, why _not_ tonight?”

Simon pauses, then says, “Are we ready?”

“Emotionally or practically?” He’s only half-kidding. “Covered on the latter. Izzy’s been really enthusiastic about helping with this.”

“I bet,” Simon laughs. “Emotionally?”

Jace is buzzing, but not in a bad way. It’s the same feeling as spending all day outside and getting sun-drunk. “I’m good. But I think I’m a little nervous,” he allows.

“Jace Herondale is super forthcoming, too,” Simon says. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use the word ‘nervous’ in the — okay, we haven’t known each other that long, but point stands.”

Jace snorts. “Yeah, well, I’ve been hanging out with this guy who vomits out all his feelings all the time without any sense of self-preservation so, you know. I guess he’s rubbing off on me.”

“Not yet he’s not,” Simon says playfully, which makes Jace groan. “Come on, I had to! You set me up for that!”

Jace shakes his head, smiling. “You’re an idiot, Simon.” Then, “I told my grandmother that you were my boyfriend.”

“Jace Herondale is wild,” Simon says. “I can’t wait to meet him later. Do you think he’ll like me?”

“Nope,” Jace says bluntly, but his heart thumps painfully in his chest.

After they hang up, Jace drifts back downstairs in a pleasant daze. He feels sort of apart from everyone else, like he has a secret nobody knows. There is a pleasurable hum along his nerves, and he’s surprised by how unsettled he’s not. He used to be so good at burying things, back in the days before Clary arrived and stuck a stick of lit dynamite into all his preconceived notions; now it’s like he has to examine every goddamn feeling he has and figure out what it means. It’s exhausting. But at the moment it doesn’t seem to be burying him. Instead he’s just existing inside it. Fear and anticipation and excitement. All of it is fine.

 

 

 

They decide to meet at the boathouse. Simon hasn’t lived there for weeks, but it’s private and relatively neutral; there are no Clave edicts to navigate or nosy mothers to circumvent. There’s just a lot of empty space and a usable bed. 

There’s something else about it, too. It kind of feels like their space, the site of so many secret meetings and well-intentioned mistakes. 

Jace has one incredibly awkward conversation with Alec on his way out of the Institute, a last-minute jolt of jitters that had him seeking out reassurance. It wasn’t — It wasn’t necessarily that he hadn’t been with a guy before and maybe Simon had and maybe Jace had no fucking clue what he was doing. It was more that he’d never been with someone he felt like this about.

He’d had a lot of very good but very casual sex, with no complaints but very few repeat performances. Sex was something he didn’t allow to get tangled up in emotions, so he’d mostly chosen partners who weren’t particularly invested in him and vice versa. He’s never had a girlfriend, never gone on a date. With Simon, it’s not just the sex. It’s everything. 

Which is why he decides to talk to Alec, who is less than thrilled about it. He surveys Jace with a mix of disbelief and bone-deep exhaustion. It’s a very familiar look on him. “I already know more about your sex life than I ever wanted to know. As long as this escapade happens somewhere other than my boyfriend’s apartment, you’re good.” 

“That was one time!”

“Over the course of like twelve hours.”

Jace grins. “That’s right, thanks for the reminder.”

Despite himself, Alec releases a small huff of laughter. “Fine. What’s the problem?” He grimaces with sudden distaste. “Please tell me you don’t want tips. I think Simon is the person you should be going to for that, soul-bonded or not.”

“I don’t need _tips_ , I have access to the internet.” Jace presses his lips together. “I — I’m — With Magnus, you knew, right?” 

Alec tilts his head slightly. “Knew what?”

“That is was… That it wouldn’t be a mistake, I guess,” Jace says. “Even if you were a romantic disaster who had only been in love once with a girl who wasn’t and then was and then wasn’t your sister. And you’d never been to the movies or taken someone out for dinner. And you only knew how to flirt with knives.”

Alec has a funny, particular smile that seems to curve up and down at the same time. “I don’t think you have to worry about dinner with Simon. As long as you’re not it.”

Jace rolls his eyes. “Safety measures are in place.”

Alec nods slightly but doesn’t ask him to elaborate. “Simon knows who you are. He didn’t come into this with any illusions about you. None of that information would be new to him. I don’t think you have to worry about him expecting some mundane who didn’t accidentally not commit incest.” His gaze turns a little more intent. “Or is that it? That he knows too much?”

Having a perceptive parabatai is a hazard. 

“Maybe,” Jace says.

Alec takes a minute and then he says, “It can seem terrifying, sure. But if it’s something you want and something you’re ready for, then it’s not actually as scary as you thought it’d be. It’s a good thing, for someone to know you. I promise. I know you, don’t I?”

It’s funny, but when Jace arrives at the boathouse he does feel like a new person — or at least a more pared down version of himself, one with the layers peeled back. He doesn’t see Simon anywhere, but as he’s shifting the heavy metal door back, he feels hands settle on his sides and slide down to his hips as someone steps up behind him. Simon kisses the nape of his neck. “Hey there.”

Jace leans back into him, but says, “Strike one, Lewis.”

“What do — oh, damn.” Simon wraps his arms around Jace. “No mouths on necks. Duly noted. But I did feed right before I came here.” Hastily, he adds, “From a bag. Obviously.”

They had planned it out. Over days and phone calls and text messages they had pinned down rules and positions, talked through worst case scenarios and tried to minimize risks. Jace had utilized Izzy’s burgeoning interest in the weapons department to get a pair of vampire-safe cuffs. Simon was not allowed to kiss his throat, which Jace considered a great loss. The greater loss was that Jace was not allowed to kiss Simon at all if his fangs were out. 

Once inside, Simon slips his hands under the quilted leather of Jace’s jacket, skimming over his shoulders and arms to ease it off him. There’s a little hitch in Jace’s throat but he remains still, head slightly bowed, as Simon lifts his shirt up and off. The boathouse is as chill as ever but Simon’s fingers are cooler still when they land lightly on Jace’s bare skin, tracing out the shapes of his runes. 

“Now tell me,” Jace says, both of them looking down to watch Simon unbuckle his belt. “How was it you got a bed delivered to a boathouse in the first place?”

Simon laughs. “Don’t put anything past Amazon, man.”

Shoes are discarded on the way from the door to the ersatz bedroom. Jace is just in his jeans, skin prickling with gooseflesh, and he hovers at the perimeter of the room while Simon wanders around making it habitable. He drags new sheets out of his bag and adjusts the lighting, puts on music and even lights a few candles. It occurs to Jace that this is very practiced. “Holy shit, you have a _routine_. I have underestimated you, Simon Lewis.”

“Exceeding low expectations is how I operate,” Simon says with a cheeky grin, but there’s a crumb of something real enough in it that Jace has to come over and kiss him. And whatever tension was left in him is lost in that kiss, in the open tilt of Simon’s mouth and the touch of his cold hands.

“Take off your clothes,” Jace orders, low and gruff. 

“You want it done, do it yourself,” Simon retorts.

So he does. He doesn’t even do it nicely, he can’t; denim jacket and band tee are dispatched with roughly and tossed aside. Simon is already getting hard. Jace’s fingers brush against him as he yanks down Simon’s zipper and pushes his jeans down his hips impatiently. It’s so obvious then, the shape of him outlined so clearly, and Jace feels it for maybe the first time, thick under his fingers. Simon makes a little noise like a whimper and Jace squeezes. 

“Ready?” Jace asks, but Simon shakes his head.

“First, let me —” Faced with having his hands tied in a matter of minutes, it’s like Simon wants to get in as much contact as he can. He cups Jace’s face and kisses him while his palms follow mirrored paths down the tendons of Jace’s neck, over his rounded shoulders, and along his arms. Simon traces around his wrists and over his knuckles, tangles their fingers together briefly before releasing him. When he rubs Jace’s chest he must feel the insistent beat of Jace’s heart because he murmurs, “It’s fine. You’re fine.”

Simon’s lips move lower and lower on Jace’s torso until he’s on his knees. Jace stops breathing entirely. Simon undoes the button and wriggles the zipper down, then tugs the tight-fitting fabric off, catching Jace’s briefs with it. Simon pauses to press a filthy kiss to Jace’s cock through the cotton and then gets rid of all of it, parts his lips and takes Jace between them. 

That had not been planned. Jace gasps, clutches at Simon’s back and his hair. The slow, controlled bob of Simon’s head is almost too much to take, but even more overwhelming is when he pulls back and grins, lips wet, eyes glinting wickedly.

Jace drags him up for a full-bodied kiss that carries them close enough to the bed that they can careen onto its surface. He has to get up again for the cuffs, a process that takes much too long with too many pauses to kiss, to divest Simon of his boxers, to mouth over his hipbone and teasingly lick just the head of his cock. Jace doesn’t think twice about it until after he’s done it and then he flushes, embarrassingly pleased.

The metal cuffs are surprisingly weighty, and they almost feel like they’re humming softly in the way technology does. “They won’t hurt,” Jace promises him. No Clave tricks despite where they came from. “Look. It’s not exactly part of their original design, but I made sure they were lined.”

Simon kisses him. “You’re fucking adorable,” he says. “Do you want me to get myself ready first?”

Jace wets suddenly dry lips. “No. I’ll do it. I want to.”

That grin is back. “Cool.” Simon drops back and puts his arms above his head. “Then let’s go.”

Jace sits at Simon’s side, hip snug against his ribcage, and leans over him to fit each cuff carefully around each wrist. A rune affixes them to the headboard. He smoothes his fingers over the sensitive insides of Simon’s arms, smiling when Simon fidgets a little and laughs, ticklish. Simon’s veins are almost green under skin no longer quite so blanched by keeping nighttime hours and there are dark little freckles peppered here or there that Jace does not resist kissing. 

Simon smiles at him and leans up like he wants a real kiss, so Jace has to give it to him. Their mouths meet open and hurried, too on edge for what’s to come, too intense for any kind of finesse. In seconds Simon is straining against his bindings to kiss Jace harder, almost growling a little when he urges, “Come on.”

Jace is quick to obey, shifting over so he can settle between Simon’s thighs. Then he just takes Simon in for a moment: the long bare sprawl of his body; its tensed, taut musculature. Jace wants so much so badly that he can’t do anything but stare, which Simon must mistake for nerves because he asks, “Do you need me to talk you through it?”

“Yeah,” Jace says. “Please.” He touches the sharply protruding lines of Simon’s hipbones, the deep furrows beneath that lead to his cock, curving upwards in need of attention. “Close your eyes.”

Simon almost seems to shiver before he readjusts, bringing his knees up a little and providing Jace with a view he truly appreciates. “Okay. First things first: lube.”

Jace isn’t ignorant of how this works and he doesn’t really think he needs detailed instructions, but he likes listening to Simon all the same. There’s something reassuring about having Simon take him through it step by step. How careful he is, maybe. How dedicated he is to doing things right.

But when Jace uncaps the bottle and wets his fingers, it isn’t Simon he reaches for. He takes a deep breath and slides his hand down between his own legs, presses the pad of his finger against himself.

Simon assumed Jace would want to be on top, but he didn’t ask so Jace didn’t correct him. He hadn’t been certain, anyway, he just — it was something he thought about, sometimes. Had done since they first stretched out together in this boathouse, fully clothed but craving closeness. Jace had always wanted Simon as close as he could get him. He’d come prepared just in case, but he hadn’t made up his mind until he felt Simon for the first time, his cock slotting so perfectly into the dip of Jace’s palm.

But Jace winces slightly as he works a finger in. “Have you done it a lot?” he asks gruffly, to distract Simon. The intruding pressure, the strangeness of it, salts his desire with doubt.

“Sure,” Simon murmurs. “Just by myself. I’ve never really — you know, done this with another person.”

Jace is surprised enough that he forgets what he’s doing and pushes too hard, swallowing a silent gasp of discomfort. “You haven’t?”

Simon shakes his head. “I’ve fooled around with guys, obviously.” _Obviously_. “Just not, you know, this. The only guy I tried it with, I came as soon as he put his fingers in. Like, instantly.” He bumps a knee into Jace. “And speaking of, when are you going to —” He opens his eyes. “ _Oh_.”

“Oh,” Jace agrees. “Took you long —” His breath stutters, sentence fragmenting. “Long enough.”

He’s leaning forward now, one hand sinking into the mattress while the other one’s busy. Maybe he should have let Simon do this to him. He just wanted to know for sure for himself first, in case it turned out to be a mistake. In case —

Jace loses his train of thought in a gasp, but has enough wits about him to ask, “Is this okay? A change in plans?”

“Literally nothing has ever been more okay in my eighteen years of life on this earth,” Simon says in a rush. 

Laughter is on Jace’s lips, but one look at Simon sends a pulse of heat through him instead. Simon’s eyes are so dark that it takes Jace a minute to realize they’re almost all pupil, just a thin ring of deep brown outlining his irises. Jace pushes another finger in and wrenches a ragged noise from his throat. “How do I know when it’s — when I’m —”

“How does it feel?”

“Like I want to fuck you so bad I can’t see straight.”

This time Simon laughs, delighted. “There’s a pun in there I —”

Jace gives him such a look of flat loathing that the rest of the sentence is lost in helpless, but no less emphatic, laughter. 

“No puns,” Simon says firmly, very solemn except for his grin. “I’m sorry for even bringing it up.”

“You should be.” Jace pulls his fingers out much too fast so he can shuffle forward and plant his knees on either side of Simon’s body. He can feel Simon underneath him, against him. Straining. “If you know what’s good for you.”

“I’m at your mercy.” His tone is light and joking, but Simon stares up at Jace hungrily. “Do your worst.”

Jace smirks at him and it comes out stupid-soft, too much of a smile. There’s a tiny twinge of apprehension in the pit of his stomach but he smothers it by wrapping a slick hand around Simon’s dick. He lifts himself up a little and presses Simon against him, takes a deep breath and tries to relax. The muscles of his thighs burn from how still he’s holding himself, from controlling the slow, slow descent.

It doesn’t hurt, exactly. Jace is used to pain, and this hardly registers as that. It’s weird. The pressure of the head of Simon’s cock is almost unbearable but after that it’s easier, after that it’s —

Jace likes it.

“Oh god.” His voice doesn’t even sound like it’s coming from him, low and worn thin with want. “Oh god, oh god,” he can’t stop saying it, he had no idea what this would even be like, “Oh _god_ ,” he didn’t know it would be like this.

“Hey.” Simon jostles him a little, knees folding up. Jace opens hazy eyes to look at him. “How are you doing? You okay?”

_Oh god_ , he thinks, but he nods. “Your dick did not seem this big before.”

Simon’s brow furrows even as he smiles. “Thanks?”

Jace smiles. He feels like he just threw back a shot. He’s intoxicated, his entire body warm and buzzing and highly aware, attuned to everything. Simon’s little patch of chest hair under his fingers. The coolness of Simon’s skin against Jace’s feverish flush. The persistent press of Simon inside him, how rigid Simon’s hips are as he tries not to move before Jace is ready.

Jace licks his lower lip and lets his eyes slide closed again. He has to figure it out, what feels good. One hand moves behind him, fingers glancing off Simon’s thigh and finding the surface of the bed. The heel of his other hand nestles low on Simon’s stomach. His body arches and he rolls his hips experimentally. “What are you waiting for?”

Nothing hurts anymore, or comes close to hurting. There’s only the sensation of Simon inside him, the stretch of it; the way Jace can feel it when something changes in Simon, the exact moment he stops holding back. Jace doesn’t care about anything right now except this: the roiling wave of satisfying heat in his body, the wild racing of his pulse. The knowledge that Simon can feel it as intimately as Jace can.

Jace rocks his hips, circles them, learns how every different way feels. How many girls was he with without ever knowing what it was like for them? He feels a new kinship with them now, an unexpected understanding.

“Jesus,” Simon bites out. “Look at you.”

But Jace looks at him instead. He tosses sweat-damp hair out of his face as he leans forward, hands firm on Simon’s chest. Simon’s face is turned against his bicep, lips pulled back, all teeth. He’s even snarling a little, writhing and twisting but kept in place by the cuffs. He keeps making this small sharp sound somewhere in his throat, almost disembodied.

“Yeah, look at me,” Jace tells him. He wants Simon’s dark eyes on him. He wants to kiss Simon but he knows if he did there would be blood between them again and there can’t be, even if the thought makes precum bead at the tip of his cock.

Simon pulls himself back into the moment enough to direct his gaze to Jace, but he’s so blitzed out on lust it’s almost unseeing. What happens next happens very fast: the muscles of Simon’s arms bulge as he jerks them forward and the cuffs come away from the headboard with a cracking noise; then Simon rolls them over, pillowing Jace’s neck on the heavy chain that links the still-fastened cuffs together. His arms are straight, back curved. Jace moans and desperately, desperately tries not to come.

He grips Simon with eager hands, lifts up to meet his every thrust. Then he tosses his head back, not realizing that he’d bared his neck until Simon’s lips ghost across the thin skin.

Simon’s movements slow. The very tip of his tongue trails up the center of Jace’s throat, over the underside of jaw and chin, and then Simon kisses him with such deceptive softness that Jace can only sigh. He winds himself around Simon, wraps him up. He presses their foreheads together. 

“Look at you,” Simon murmurs, so quiet and so aching that something catches in Jace’s chest and he swallows, hard. 

“Simon,” he breathes. Kisses him softly, says it again and kisses him again. Simon pushes up onto one elbow but doesn’t go far because Jace has an arm locked around his neck. They’re in a messy tangle, but a good one; the sex is slow and forceful and tender. Simon comes when Jace bites his lip. He buries his cool face against Jace’s neck, mouth slack, and jerks him off, still hard inside him but no longer moving.

They breath together for several long minutes after it’s over even though Simon does not actually need to breathe. Jace appreciates the gesture and all it represents, that Simon forgot he wasn’t human anymore because Jace had unspooled his brain. Then Simon pulls out and flops down beside him, exhausted. Apart.

If the fullness was strange, the emptiness is stranger still. Jace lays there with his thighs still splayed by no one between them and has to put a hand down to touch where he is swollen, wet with lube and come. Simon was inside him. Inside his body. All of a sudden it is alien and incredible that people do that. 

“Jace.”

He turns to look at Simon, not knowing what to expect, but Simon just lifts his shackled wrists with a sheepish smile. “Good thing circulation’s not a problem for me,” he jokes. “Can you?”

Jace nods and casts about for his stele in the sheets so he can unlock the cuffs with a quick rune. They fall onto the bed between them, chill to the touch even after all that exertion. Upon closer inspection, Jace realizes that Simon hadn’t wrenched free, but had actually broken the headboard: a chunk was fully ripped out and remains attached to the cuffs, and it left a big fissure in the wood. There’s even a faint shower of dust and splinters that he hastily brushes away.

When Jace finds his voice, it sounds hoarse. “By the fuckin’ angel, Lewis.”

Simon tips his head back so he can see the damage upside-down. He winces but does not seem particularly perturbed. “Oops?”

Jace snorts as he falls back into the sheets. There’s a twinge low in his body whenever he moves but he doesn’t mind it. He still feels blunted and stunned, which is maybe why he doesn’t realize that Simon is talking again. “Sorry — what did you say?”

Simon is on his side facing Jace, head in hand. He studies Jace curiously. After a moment, he cups Jace’s cheek and slides a thumb over his cheekbone, smudging away tear tracks that Jace hadn’t known were there. “How do you feel?”

“Deflowered,” Jace jokes, but that is kind of how he feels. 

Simon smiles. “You look it,” he agrees.

His gaze travels over Jace like he’s trying to find cracks. Jace assumes he’s a complete mess: sweat and come on his skin, chin irritated by Simon’s stubble, lips kissed until they were puffy, apparently crying, totally dazed. He struggles to explain and what comes out is stilted, embarrassed. He wasn’t actually deflowered. It shouldn’t feel so — shattering.

“It’s just,” Jace says. “You were inside me.” He keeps coming back to that, can’t make it add up.

Simon shifts so he can trace his fingers over the lattice of veins in his own arm. “Same,” he says, a small smile on his lips.

Jace has to kiss him again. It’s soft at first, but Jace holds him there until it becomes searching and when Simon pulls back, Jace goes with him. He rests his head next to Simon’s on the dusty pillow and flings an arm over his chest.

Then, in disbelief, “Are you _still_ hard?”

Sheepish again, Simon says, “It takes me a couple of times now.”

Even worn out, the idea appeals to Jace. He curls his fingers around Simon lazily and gloats at his sharp inhale. Jace presses gentle, quick kisses to Simon’s neck and jaw as he gets him off one more time, Simon’s lips parting on a sigh when he comes. Jace isn’t sure he’s capable of it himself right now, but it’s good to know for the future. 

After, Simon presses a kiss to Jace’s forehead. Normally he would find that condescending, but right now it’s only nice. 

“You’re sweet,” Simon tells him, wonder in it. “I never knew that you could be — well, like this.”

It’s the kind of sentiment that would usually have Jace spitting and scowling, storming out in a fury that Simon had the audacity to know anything about him that could later be used as ammunition. But Jace is still tucked against him with no intention of moving. Maybe ever.

“I didn’t know you were so strong,” Jace tells him in return. He knew Simon could be brash and stupid if it meant helping those he loved, but it wasn’t until Jace watched him crawl out of the earth that he realized the extent of what Simon was capable of. And he can still feel the careful path of Simon’s tongue on his throat, his teeth so close but his resolve stronger.

The bright grin that blossoms on Simon’s face is so exuberant that Jace can’t believe he’s the one that brought it out. But insecurity still sneaks through. “You don’t regret it or anything, right?”

Jace doesn’t regret any of it. Not any of it.

 

 

 

Jace returns to the Institute feeling like someone put him back into his skin the wrong way. He’s sore all over, and not just in the expected places; there’s an ache deep in his shoulders, in the joints of his hips, in his core. His clothes felt weird when he put them back on too, almost as though he’d outgrown them.

It’s almost dawn. After another attempt made it clear that no, Jace could not go again after all, he and Simon took a bracingly cold shower together in the boathouse. Simon apologized profusely through some very insensitive cackling, because he couldn’t feel temperature and it had never bothered him. They slept a little, Jace’s hair drying in every which way from the pillow, but he needs more sleep than that.

Instead he runs into Clary.

She must be coming back from patrol because she looks awfully alert for the early hour; more alert than Jace feels. They’ve passed each other so many times over the last few weeks, spare with dialogue and cold-shouldered, but now they’re drawn towards each other across the Ops Center. 

“I’m sorry,” Jace says first, without the anger of the last time he’d tried. “I should’ve told you.”

“You were going through a lot,” Clary allows. “And I — I guess I finally thought I knew where we stood, when I thought you were my brother. Then everything else… I don’t know. I needed time to process.” 

Jace smiles. “Join the club.”

She smiles too, slighter but no less real. She seems to take in his appearance properly for the first time, and she raises a telling eyebrow. “Were you…?”

Jace clears his throat. She makes a faintly amused sound.

“So,” Clary says, simple and direct. “You and Simon?”

Jace nods, but he wants to offer her more than that. After everything, he wants her to know that it’s not just about rolling rumpled into the Institute at six in the morning after a night together. Simon matters to him. “He makes me feel calm,” Jace admits.

He’s surprised when she smiles again, gentler this time. “Me too,” she says. “Maybe because he never is.”

Jace laughs. “Maybe.” Then, “You should call him. You know, if you want. He misses you.”

Clary meets his eyes straight-on and it seems to Jace that there’s a promise in it, a dedication to making things right again, between all of them. “I miss him too.”

He doesn’t think they’re just talking about Simon. “You may not be my sister or my girlfriend or… That’s a weird thing to say,” Jace muses, and she laughs. “But we can be friends. If you want.”

Clary doesn’t say anything, but she reaches up to squeeze his arm. She gives him a businesslike nod before she turns to go, and it feels good enough for now.

 

 

 

Jace and Izzy aren’t always on the same schedule these days, so he gets used to going to meetings alone. He’s getting better at it. He still can’t drink the coffee, but he can talk, sometimes.

“Once,” he starts, “my sister said something about becoming someone she didn’t recognize. But the thing is…for me, it wasn’t like that. I always knew that’s who I was, deep down. Someone weak and desperate and helpless. I’d been…told that enough. I thought I was someone who only knew how to hurt. Hurting was the only thing that ever felt like anything. Like love.”

He looks up at the bruised ceiling of the rec room. “I couldn’t cut it out so instead I had to feed it.” He thinks of his mother and curls his fingers around the family ring Imogen had given him, which hangs from a chain around his neck. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not bad to be weak. I mean, what does that really mean? Sensitive? Vulnerable? Struggling?”

Jace makes himself make eye contact with the counselor, with the people listening. “I’m trying not to mind being those things, lately,” he says, then pauses. “People need to be loved.”

It’s broad daylight when the meeting lets out, sun streaming across busy streets. Jace had to switch to days when he was put back on active duty, since all his nights were now accounted for again. The few he had off he had to savor. Not that Simon minds making time for him.

He’s waiting just outside the doors, fresh off his own group chat at a temple a few blocks away. He grins when he sees Jace. “How was it?”

“Incredible,” Jace says. They fall into step together. “I love sharing all my deepest anxieties with people I barely know.”

“I’m counting it as progress that you’ll even cop to having anxieties.”

Jace snorts. “You would.”

“And _I_ am not _at all_ embarrassed to admit it, because I’m not a tightly wound, repressed Shadowhunter.”

“Now, see, why do you think I would ever introduce you to my grandma when you say things like that to me?”

“Nooo,” Simon crows, laughing. “No, I have to meet her! Grandmas love me, historically. Jace.”

This is the worst part: Jace has nothing left to hide behind. All of his defenses are gone. He kisses Simon until laughter is forgotten, there on the sidewalk in the sun, people sidestepping them as they go about their own lives, oblivious to everything that brought Jace and Simon to this spot. To the place where they can do this and it feels normal, feels right.

The world didn’t end. Jace keeps learning that.


End file.
